


Golden Hours

by deweii



Series: those of different blood 'verse [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, I am uhhh not going to tag all the characters so just Generally all of them are here, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Magic AU, Mental Health Issues, Multi, but it turns out okay!, eposette but you gotta kinda squint for it, i just can't write anything that doesn't have angst, les amis i mean, slow burn i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 05:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18067382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deweii/pseuds/deweii
Summary: “And it was worth it too, wasn’t it? That landlord deserved it, abstract dancing is twenty fucking times better with fire, and we got into better housing in the end.”The words had slipped from his mouth before he could stop himself, because Grantaire couldn’t ever seem to not say exactly what he didn’t want to. His friends' liveliness was ground to a halt like clogged gears. He could feel his heartbeat pound against his ribcage like a frantic bird and leaned back to swallow as much of his sparkling cider as he could in one gulp like it was cheap wine. One gulp, which meant all of it.“You dance?” Courfeyrac asked, eyes alight with awe.





	Golden Hours

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry for this entire mess, the fact that I contradict myself at least 120000 times during this fic, and the purple prose nonsensery.  
> rip.

There would be moments, in between the rush of life and the almost painfully slow beats, when Grantaire would miss dancing.

He’d been no legend at it, sure, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t given him something wonderful. Dancing was a breath of life, the perfect balance of his artistic side who would come out of a daze in front of a canvas with paint smearing his cheeks, and his athletic side who would meet up with Bahorel every Tuesday and Thursday to box and strike up frankly ridiculous challenges for each other.

It should have been easier to remember, easier to think about, easier to consider getting back into. It wasn’t.

The same ache he felt in his chest that missed dancing also hurt enough that made him convince himself that, at most, he just missed it with the sort of nostalgia you missed things you hadn’t done for a while. The hurt in his mind told a different story, but Grantaire was nothing if not good at ignoring pressing matters.

He had caught himself pausing on his walk back to his flat from his job at a tattoo parlour – magic, because painting wasn’t going to pay his rent or buy him food, and the city wasn’t exactly full to bursting with art students who also happened to be sorcerers – to stare through the front window of a dance studio he’d never seen before.

It was only as someone brushed past him in their hurry to get wherever it was they were going that Grantaire pulled himself out of his reverie. He blinked, realising a soft mist had begun to descend while he had lost himself in his mind. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.

He tried not to think about that studio – it was new, it must be, he’d never seen it before – too hard. Instead, he tried to capture the moment in his mind’s eye when the mist turned gold as the sun sank into the west and splashed the sky with a mirage of colours. Pastels, today, and mostly pink and gold.

That, he could busy himself with. It would look good too, a canvas of the sunset in a gentle rain, the streets glistening from the condensation and streetlamps just beginning to turn on. He could enchant it, so the mist shifted and pattered across the concrete below.

A slow day at work and a nice sunset was certainly not a bad way to start out a week. Grantaire wouldn’t say he was optimistic – he was more stable than he had been a few years ago, but he was pretty sure he’d stay a cynic to his grave – about where it would end up, and he didn’t like to speculate. But still. He could appreciate life’s softer, kinder moments.

It was when the sun was about to be swallowed by the horizon that it turned bright red, a harsh contrast to the pale gold and baby pinks, and then Grantaire tried not to think about real optimists.

 

* * *

 

Tuesdays meant evenings of meeting up with Bahorel to box but, more importantly, the first Les Amis meeting of the week.

Honestly, it seemed like Tuesday was the biggest hit or miss day of the week. If a Monday was shitty, then you could just pretend that, being the first day of the week, it didn’t exist. If a Monday was great, it still meant there were six more days in a week to get all wrong.

But Tuesdays felt like the week, the _real_ week, was truly beginning, and that’s where you had to get it right or the rest of it would drag on.

Whether this was a result of attending the meetings or not, Grantaire couldn’t say for sure. It didn’t matter, it was still hit or miss. Hit or miss being severely – _completely,_ his treacherous heart whispered – dependant on Enjolras’ mood.

He ducked into the Musain, escaping the bland grey sky that gave no tell to rain or sunshine, and found he was among the first several of the Les Amis to arrive. This itself wasn’t particularly surprising or unsurprising, Grantaire showed up with little regards to time and predictability and varied according to the day.

It was, however, surprising that the quick and habitual scan of the back-corner table left him glancing only between Combeferre and Courfeyrac. There was a distinctly empty chair at the table, although neither of them seemed concerned with how close they had brought their chairs together and were scanning over something.

There was a pang in his chest which caused his stomach to roll with guilt when he took in how comfortable they were with each other. It wasn’t fair to them to be envious of something he didn’t have – which was his fault, or maybe the little defector of his heart’s. It didn’t matter in the end.

And then, of course, he had to wonder where Enjolras was, and that was a whole new pang in his chest for several reasons. He decided to focus on the one that seemed more pressing and less familiar- Enjolras was never late.

He didn’t have time to imagine everything that could have gone wrong, because Jehan was calling his name in their soft voice from one of the tables. Grantaire cast a glance towards Courfeyrac and Combeferre – the former of the two angling his spiralling horns strategically so he could press against the latter without impaling him – and then the door, before he made his way over and settled next to Jehan, who was smiling up at him.

Their pale, dusty ginger hair was pulled back in a braid and flowers dappled through the strands like stars, one loose strand curling behind their slightly pointed ear.

Jehan’s gentle kind of grace made them one of Grantaire’s favourite member of Les Amis to sketch. It may or may not have had to do with the fact that he knew Jehan wouldn’t mind, and he didn’t feel weird asking the nymph like he would some of the others.

That wasn’t the truth entirely. He sketched them all and felt okay to pry for most of them. He may or may not want to sketch their golden leader more often than he already did – he did a lot but only from memory, never _never_ from subject.

Most of all, he wanted to paint Enjolras, but even that felt too intimate. Which, of all the creepy lines he’d already crossed, using paints instead of just a pencil shouldn’t have been such a big deal.

(“He’s unfairly beautiful. It’s really like- nobody should be allowed to be that golden and intense and that fucking beautiful? He should know he’s not allowed,” he’d said to Éponine one night, after a few glasses of wine. She didn’t often allow him those any more- that night had been a treat.

“I’d pay to witness you telling that to him,” she’d replied and downed the last of the wine in her glass, fangs clinking against it, “right to his ‘golden, intense, beautiful fucking face’.”

He’d frowned. “You mock me like you don’t rhapsodise Cosette like she’s the moon all the fucking time.”

She’d tipped the wine bottle over his head and his curls smelled funny for a while, but her cheeks had also darkened and at least Grantaire wasn’t the only damn fool for someone else. But he was still the only damn fool for someone unattainable)

He pulled out his sketchpad and flipped to the draft he’d started last night, so as to do something with his hands lest he start trying to pull threads on his paint-stained jeans or tap on the table – Enjolras hated when he did that, and Grantaire made an effort not to. Even, apparently, when he wasn’t here.

“What muse has caught you this time?” Jehan asked. Grantaire could feel their gaze on him where they leaned back in their chair, politely not leaning forward to look at his sketchpad until he’d given the okay. And even though by now, Grantaire was pretty sure there was nothing he wouldn’t let Jehan or Éponine see, he appreciated the gesture. So many people just _assumed_ his art was theirs to look at and judge as they would. Jehan gave him a chance to decide for himself.

“Hopefully? A new painting,” he told them, and tilted the pad to show them. “Last night’s sunset. I’ve been aspiring to practise my illusion charms.”

Jehan hummed, eyes glittering. “I love your enchanted pieces,” they said wistfully.

If they meant to add more, it was cut off by the chime of the bell and the door swinging open wildly.

Where Jehan was that gentle kind of grace, Enjolras was a sharp, severe beautiful. He demanded an audience, a large presence, and you couldn’t just _not_ notice him. He was the pinnacle of famed fae looks, intense and alluring, and the very perfect kind of disaster for Grantaire.

He couldn’t claim to have met so many fae before Enjolras because fae were reclusive – they kept to themselves because they couldn’t be bothered with people they viewed as “mortals”, even though they certainly weren’t immortal themselves. He didn’t have many comparisons and honestly, he didn’t need them (Not good ones, anyway. He’d met only a few fae, and the diversity hadn’t been inspired amongst them).

It was pathetic, the way he gravitated towards Enjolras. The certainty that, regardless of how lovely someone else might be to him in the future, he’d always come back to Enjolras.

Right now, his jaw was tense, and his eyes burned. Anger and Enjolras were certainly well acquainted with each other, but it was more often than not an anger stoked by the flames of passion. The way he stormed over to Combeferre and Courfeyrac, who were watching him with varying expressions of concern, had nothing to do with passion or his usual righteousness.

“What’s up with blondie? Did you criticise his sense of justice again?”

Grantaire jumped as Éponine slid into the chair to his left. “Jesus, Ep. A hint of warning next time?”

She rolled her eyes, folding one leg over the other and tapping her knee with burgundy coloured nails that were sharper and longer than any human’s were. “The bell chimed when I arrived, I’m not a ghost. It is no fault of mine that you’re too busy pining to notice,” she said pointedly.

He glanced towards Jehan as if expecting help, but they were only smiling privately and knowingly. There were times when Grantaire thought he might want to trade his friends when his miserable infatuation with Enjolras seemed more like a joke than the crushing weight it was.

And he also knew he would drive himself to exhaustion or further if someone tried to take them away.

“He was only in here a moment before you were,” Jehan chimed in helpfully.

Across the café, Enjolras had his back turned on Grantaire – which was the only chair left at their table but disappointing all the same – but was visibly fidgeting in his seat. Combeferre was watching him with pursed lips. Courfeyrac was scooting his chair across the floor – and Grantaire couldn’t be accused of being the only one staring with _that_ awful screech filling the room – to wrap his arm around Enjolras’ shoulders.

Trying hard to ignore the worm wriggling in his stomach at the familiarity of the three, something unattainable and untouchable like Enjolras himself, Grantaire turned back to his sketchpad and let the scratch of his pencil drown out the noise of the café.

It became clear, after nearly an hour, that Enjolras’ anger was not what it normally was. He had the fiery passion back in his eyes, and he looked like the kind of man straight out of legends or myths as he paced the room, smooth voice softening Grantaire’s senses to the point of relaxation. But he was still agitated, still too worked up.

And then, while Grantaire was adding the outline of a streetlamp, he suddenly realised the room had gone quiet. He glanced up cautiously, to find Enjolras’ eyes alight with a special kind of fury – but oddly, not the kind Grantaire usually provoked – burning holes right into his head.

When Grantaire raised an eyebrow without responding, Enjolras’ jaw tightened. “Is this an art studio?” he asked, tone dangerously low.

Grantaire, unable to stop himself because he was doing better but it was a reflex at this point to drive Enjolras mad if it meant feeling the rays of his sunshine for a few moments longer, glanced around at everyone else. “Last time I checked it was a café, but I could be mistaken. It wouldn’t be a first, perhaps only one that I was doing all the work.”

He… wasn’t sure what he had done to provoke Enjolras, or why he set his lips into a fine line the longer he watched Grantaire. This wasn’t the first time he had been drawing in the café, and he was quite sure Enjolras would trade his left arm if it meant getting Grantaire to shut up long enough to hold a full meeting with an argument.

“Yes,” Enjolras agreed stonily, “it would be.” He ran one hand along his face and up through his flaxen curls. “Are you incapable of taking anything seriously?”

Grantaire stilled, the side of his hand resting against the grainy paper of his sketchpad. He stared at Enjolras for several long moments of silence. Everyone else had frozen too, like for a moment, the world had stopped, and it was just him and Enjolras. It was something Grantaire had imagined, perhaps one too many times, but this was quite possibly the worst way for it to do so.

Perhaps it would have been all right, had Enjolras’ tone not been so utterly convicted, so irate.

His stomach churned and he finally let out a breath, before hiding the shock of the moment with a lazy grin. “Conquests for justice, for equality, to even the scales, are predetermined to fail. It’s hard to take such endeavours seriously, as you say, but you speak such pretty fallacies, there should be few who would not wish to find themselves martyrs because of it.”

With the way Enjolras had stormed in, he should have reeled back. He was sure he’d hear that from Combeferre later – in the nicest way possible, of course – but he didn’t. He’d already run his mouth, and Enjolras was already flushing, cheeks the colour of autumn leaves, which would have been lovely if the heat, the intensity, the passion, was coming from a different place.

“If you’re so engraved with such a belief that we will go up in smoke, why should you linger where you will only challenge, _as you say_ , pretty fallacies? What merit do you possibly gain from these endeavours?” Enjolras demanded. The afternoon sunlight poured in through the windows, highlighting every sharp angle, his radiance, and made his hair glitter like molten gold. It made him look striking, in a beautiful and terrible way.

And he was a wordsmith, constructing arguments and dialogs to make the unjust and corrupt weep, or to make their blood boil with self-righteousness or at the very least, instinct to survive. He was, as well, frightfully exceptional at pulling the threads along the seams of Grantaire’s self and making them, him, come undone.

In the end, he wasn’t sure if he was influenced by Enjolras’ already thunderous mood or by a newly stabilised self-preservation against taking things Enjolras said too personally – which he did, always, but maybe he could at least make himself scarce before it escalated.

“Why should I indeed?” Grantaire asked, because he could not help himself, “if it so displeases the dazzling Apollo? Perhaps not, then.”

He wasn’t sure whether it was a sickening delight or disappointment that Enjolras froze as he stood up, his chair clattering backwards and echoing through the room. He didn’t stay to see the inevitable relief that broke those idyllic features, as he shouldered his bag without even stopping to put his sketchpad in.

“Grantaire,” Jehan protested as he drew away, his voice soft and apologetic for something he had no part in. “R, hold, don’t-”

The bell chimed above the door as he opened it, but was cut off as the glass door slammed shut behind him. He didn’t wait to make a decision on where he was going, he turned left and let his boots thud against the concrete as cars whooshed by, birds sang in the distance, overhead, and sensations of dead leaves crunching filled the pit of his stomach.

 

* * *

 

It had been immature of him, Grantaire would realise as he collapsed on his sofa Wednesday evening. They hadn’t even gone at each other’s throats, it certainly hadn’t been the first time Enjolras had wondered why he was there – _For you_ , but the sky would fall the day he admitted that, and not because of pride in a way he sort of wished it was, but Grantaire had always been a coward – and _God_ , it hadn’t been the worst fight they’d ever had. Not even the harshest they’d been to each other.

But Grantaire was nothing if not dramatic. Bahorel had told him as much, when Grantaire called to skip their boxing night claiming that he had to take an extra shift at work that he couldn’t get out of. They both knew he was lying.

It had been a chaotic day at work, a flurry of activity all day without giving Grantaire a second to think about any of it. Now, laying back on his sofa, he had all the time in the world to think about it.

Tomorrow was another meeting and Grantaire couldn’t honestly say for sure whether he would go or not. His mind felt hazy, too much trying to process at once. He was tempted to pull one of his bottles of whisky from the cabinet he hadn’t told Éponine about but forced himself to sit up instead. He put his face in his hands and scrubbed, like that would clear his mind somehow, and then tousled his curls.

He pulled out his sketchpad instead, and dragged himself over to his worn, but well-loved easel in the corner of the room. He rolled back his sleeves, the tattoos on his arms shifting with his magic, and settled himself in with the intent to paint until everything else dissolved around him.

The plan was a fair one, until someone knocked on his door while he was trying to find the exact gold for the sunset.

Grantaire considered not answering. Éponine – and maybe Courfeyrac, but why would he be at Grantaire’s door? – was the only one who might not text him before unceremoniously dropping in on him. But he knew it wasn’t, Éponine knocked like she was trying to break his door down.

Plus, his own magic was prickling from the vicinity of somebody else’s – somebody powerful. Not a bad kind of sensation, actually the kind Grantaire revelled in when he was around Enjolras, Combeferre, or Feuilly. Éponine didn’t have magic.

Then the knocking came again, more insistently this time, and Grantaire sighed as he put his paint brush and palette down. He smothered the magic that made his tattoos dance on his arms and pulled himself over to the door.

He opened it and found Enjolras raising his fist to knock again, and Grantaire instinctively leaned back.

Colour rushed to Enjolras’ cheeks, a picture Grantaire never wanted to forget, and he hastened to put his hand down. Grantaire blinked dumbly at him, and they stayed in a frozen, discomforting silence until Enjolras raised the brown paper bag he was holding with the name _Corinth_ printed on the side. There was a thermos tucked under his other arm. “Jehan spoke of your favourite place to get pumpkin bread. The coffee is decaf, I presumed you may be in wanting of sleep.”

Grantaire blinked at him again, not quite sure he wasn’t still in some kind of daze, but managed to kick himself into moving away from the door so Enjolras could come in. “I didn’t think you knew where I lived,” he replied, mind swimming again.

Enjolras ducked his head, looking surprisingly sheepish for all his charm and wit. “I didn’t. I… asked Jehan for that too.” He held out the paper bag and the thermos to Grantaire, as though bestowing a gift to him. It was moderately – _moderately_ – endearing.

“Is it poisoned?” Grantaire asked before he could stop himself, though he still took the bag. Enjolras scowled, cheeks shockingly – but _oh_ , it was delightful, a delight Grantaire’s hands itched to paint – ruddy in the poor lighting of Grantaire’s flat. Before he could respond, Grantaire waved his hand and the door shut itself. That made Enjolras stop, though Grantaire was busy opening the bag to notice, whiffs of pumpkin curling up to his nose to make him sigh. “What brings the mighty Apollo by today?”

“I didn’t know you practised magic.”

He didn’t know why, but the statement made Grantaire pause. He glanced up to Enjolras, watching him with furrowed brows and- and something _more_ but of course, it was Enjolras so there was any number of things that _more_ could have been.

And he- well, he might have stared a little longer than necessary. Blinked, glanced around at his living room and Enjolras, standing, existing, in his living room. There was something dreadfully domestic about it, which was odd because Enjolras wasn’t the first person Grantaire had ever invited over – or not, he definitely would have remembered inviting Enjolras over even if his memory was shit.

It took a moment, to orient himself and Enjolras, standing in his badly lit living room. His hair, soft and just a little frizzled, falling in golden ringlets around his head and tickling the sides of his neck. If Grantaire didn’t already know Enjolras was a fae- well, in such lighting, he might have had trouble guessing, and wasn’t that something? Enjolras always looked the pure-blooded fae, hauntingly entrancing. Now, he was no less handsome, but it was changed. Warmer, softer.

The strings of his heart pulled and Grantaire sometimes worried that they were starting to fray. One day, as the constant and familiar tick of his clock droned on in the background of his living room, his heart would come unravelled like a ball of yarn. Over him, over Enjolras, because how could it not when he was standing there, here, in Grantaire’s flat, looking so small for once and-

“It’s not as though I advertise it,” Grantaire replied, after too long of a pause. He quirked his lip to hide the conflict storming in his mind. In his chest, his heart, that was beating a little too hard and fast to be comfortable. Sometimes, he wished he had a heart that ticked like his clock, so it didn’t hurt so much to- to- “Except when I’m at work,” he added, when Enjolras didn’t respond right away.

He was still watching Grantaire, still with a sort-of frown, and Grantaire had to fight the impulse to reach out, to smooth it away with his hands. Or his lips. Because it hurt to see him frown like that and to force himself not to touch. He was a child in a museum, and Enjolras was the most beautiful statue. He was for looking at, for revering, for following even. Not for touching – not by Grantaire, anyway.

“You work in a-” Enjolras’ eyes flit down to Grantaire’s arms, where his sleeves were still rolled up. The tattoos were still dormant. “A tattoo parlour.” He said it like a fact but there was no denying the question in his tone.

Sometimes, Enjolras was direct enough to hit a bullseye. Sometimes, now, he didn’t say everything that he meant. It was frustrating and it drove Grantaire mad and he loved it. Loved Enjolras for all those complications, for all those snags that were the trampled roses in an otherwise perfect garden.

It wasn’t healthy to put Enjolras on a pedestal, nor for Grantaire to see his flaws and believe that in another world, maybe, _maybe_ , he would have a chance because they were ever so slightly touching on an imbalanced scale. He knew that. But he’d been making progress and could only do so much at once.

He motioned Enjolras to follow as he walked towards the kitchen. Moving felt strange, like someone had cast him into another plane, an ethereal plane where reality doesn’t quite exist. And maybe it was Enjolras’ magic, because fae magic can be tricky like that, but maybe it was just _Enjolras_.

He set the bag and the thermos on the counter. Turned to find Enjolras, hovering at entrance to his kitchen. He looked painfully unsure of himself. He _never_ looked unsure.

Grantaire’s heart unravelled a little more.

“We both know you didn’t drag yourself here to ask me about my magic, Apollo,” Grantaire said, and tried very hard to ignore the way his voice cracked. If Enjolras noticed, he didn’t react. “You have more important things to do than confer with people like me.”

Enjolras’ mouth tightened and now he stepped into the kitchen, stepped closer to Grantaire and if the lights flickered and turned a little rosy, he didn’t notice – it was only a goddamned blessing that Grantaire sometimes had semblance of control over his magic, because it was intertwined in everything (his flat, mostly. He didn’t have to worry about it in public, in unfamiliar places) except maybe not because Enjolras had decided to show up. He would hate for everyone to know how he felt all the time with lights flickering and changing colours as if a poltergeist was near.

“That’s not true,” Enjolras said, standing far closer than he should be. A half an arm’s length, which wasn’t touching but enough to spin Grantaire’s mind like a record for a moment. Because they were alone. In his flat. _Christ_.

Before Enjolras can get any more out, Grantaire crossed his arms over his chest. Because this was unfamiliar and unfamiliar meant dangerous and unpredictable and- “Well, shit, Apollo, if you wanted to know about my magic you could have asked Jehan or Ep. Or like, waited until tomorrow. You didn’t have to come _over_ and- and-” He couldn’t bring himself to say with food, or a gift, or anything else, because Enjolras was the bane of his vocabulary. He settled on waving his hand, vaguely.

But Enjolras’ expression softened, _softened_ , and he looked both hopeful and vulnerable and Grantaire had to shove his hands in his pockets.

“You were going to come to the meeting tomorrow?” he asked, small and Not-Enjolras-y at all. His chin was ducked, and he was taller than Grantaire but somehow, he was still looking _up_ at Grantaire. He-

Oh. _Oh_.

“Oh,” Grantaire said. “You-” he shrugged. No, he hadn’t planned on coming to the meeting. Or well, hadn’t planned because he hadn’t decided. He’d hoped he could put that off. He ran a hand through his curls. “That’s why you’re- never mind. Forget about it. I mean, unless you _don’t_ want me there-”

“No!” Enjolras snapped the way a thunderstorm felt. Grantaire raised an eyebrow and pretended like he hadn’t nearly swallowed his own tongue. “No, I- I came to apologise.” Enjolras closed his eyes and let out a breath. He looked more like he was about to confess to a crime to trade his freedom for a life sentence than apologise. “What I said- I shouldn’t-” He opened his eyes and stared – _pierced_ , his eyes pierced into Grantaire was really the way it should’ve be described – right at Grantaire. “I didn’t mean to imply you had no place, nor that you couldn’t work on your art at the meetings. I encourage you to do so, actually, very much. I was… angry, but I shouldn’t have taken my anger out on you.”

And because Grantaire is a fucking fool and his chest grew a little too warm at the fact Enjolras was _apologising_ – to _him_ , and Enjolras never apologised it seemed - he said, “Why would you apologise for that now? I’m your favourite proverbial punching bag. If you apologised for every time you got mad at me-”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Enjolras spat. He was bristling and the air seemed to grow thick around him, eyes growing sharper and there was an undeniable aura around him that was cold and dispassionate – which was the least Enjolras thing about Enjolras – and Grantaire could feel his magic shy away from Enjolras’. “Are you incapable of accepting an apology? I _am_ sorry.” The way he said it made it sound more like he was trying to convince himself than Grantaire.

When Grantaire didn’t immediately respond, only watched Enjolras with a careful kind of apprehension and a shiver convulsing his spine, Enjolras seemed to realise he was holding his chin up with his jaw set, staring down at Grantaire with eyes that cut like daggers, and that he’d provoked his aura. He relaxed and the haze around him that had started growing tinged with grey and maroon evaporated.

An uncomfortable silence stretched out between them until Grantaire sighed and rubbed at his face. “Forget it. I mean- look, apology accepted or so forth. You didn’t have to go through the effort, I understand this is an inconvenience for you, so- yeah. It’s fine.” He waved his hand dismissively and then, before Enjolras could say anything because he was opening his mouth, he added, “Thanks. For the food, and the coffee.”

Enjolras shut his mouth and watched Grantaire, long enough that he felt heat start to sprinkle across his cheeks like rain in the dead of summer and had to glance away from Enjolras before he did something else stupid.

He expected some kind or protest, an argument, because _hell_ , Grantaire couldn’t even do apologies right, wasn’t even good enough for that. He wasn’t expecting Enjolras to hum and say, “Okay. You’re- you’re welcome.” A beat. “You’ve got pink in your hair.”

Grantaire blinked, and then looked up. Of course, he could see the tips of his curls, but none of the pink that Enjolras was mentioning. “Do I?” he asked, like they hadn’t almost been at each other’s throat’s moments before. He ran a hand through his curls, felt the gritty dry paint against his fingers and further back, two buds that were the only thing that could have, once upon a time, spoken of something more than human but now only filled him with a hot, shamed dread.

Enjolras nodded and gestured with one hand. The other was in his coat – red, because what else would he wear? – pocket. “Yeah. And your neck.”

If that didn’t make him a little dizzy, Grantaire wasn’t sure what would. Never mind he’d smeared paint on his neck, Enjolras had seen it. On his neck. Enjolras had _looked_ at his neck long enough to notice. And fuck, if that didn’t send his mind down a spiral…

“Accessories of being an artist,” he forced out through a perfected and perfectly fake grin. “That’s why we’re cooler than murderers. They can only paint themselves red – although you’d appreciate that, I’d wager.”

And he could already hear all the rants about murdering and morality and how he shouldn’t joke about things like that and- Enjolras smiled. His lips twitched, upwards, and maybe there were no teeth and it wasn’t more than a hidden, repressed sort of amusement but holy shit, Grantaire had caused that.

Scowls, glowers, frowns, cold or heated glares, those Grantaire could handle directed at him. He wasn’t sure if this was his secret, buried masochism or self-deprecation he’d been getting a handle on for several years now but couldn’t perfect, or it was just because Enjolras’ anger at him was familiar. But it was attention from someone so alive, and full of fire and passion and _goodness_ , and that made it okay.

But smiling? He wasn’t sure that could be an acceptable regular occurrence between them. Not, of course, that it would be.

 

* * *

 

On Friday, there was an impromptu movie night. Curtesy of Courfeyrac, of course.

Either everyone had been conveniently free at 7pm or, more likely, Courf had threatened everyone who wasn’t to make room in their schedule.

The door to Courfeyrac and Marius’ flat was opened by a sleepy looking Combeferre who adjusted his glasses and smiled at Grantaire like he’d just woken up. Which he probably had. There might have been inconveniences being a vampire and a nurse, but at least the schedule was the most forgiving with Combeferre’s sleeping habits. And, well, not-burning-in-the-sun habits.

“Are you and Courf even trying to be subtle anymore?” Grantaire wondered but ducked past the lethargic vampire without waiting out for a response.

He was greeted by an ever-enthusiastic hug from Courfeyrac, kisses on the cheek from Musichetta and Jehan, hugs from Bossuet, Joly, Marius, and Feuilly – whose unquestionably the best hugger. Courfeyrac informed him, in order, that everyone else was on their way, the sparkling cider Grantaire was holding could go on the kitchen table, and that they were watching a movie, which the title of slipped Grantaire’s mind as soon as it had entered.

It was a pleasant evening, if not one that passed in somewhat of a daze. Everyone ended up finding their way to the movie night, in varying emotional states but mostly positive one. Enjolras, Grantaire noted because he couldn’t seem to exist in a room without noticing where Enjolras was and he wasn’t sure whether that was one of those fae things or Enjolras things, looked a few steps away from cantankerous.

He visibly brightened as Courfeyrac whispered something to him during their hug, hair curling in golden spirals and skin a warm kind of bronze that was better illuminated in Courfeyrac and Marius’ flat than Grantaire’s.

Maybe he would tamper with his lights. Was his flat complete, without the proper lighting for a proper marvel? What was a statue without the perfect kind of radiance to highlight every detail?

He needed to stop envisioning Enjolras over at his flat. It wasn’t the first time, but it had grown distressingly worse after Enjolras had visited and stepped into his hearth.

After the movie, Courfeyrac steered the night into the kinds of conversations that could quickly derail themselves.

Somehow, it had taken a turn into telling frankly outlandish stories and who could claim the crown of strangest.

“-nobody could calm the poor thing down, and the only reason she ended up stopping was because there was a river,” Cosette was saying, a story Grantaire was paying half a mind too. The other half, he was paying to a sculpture on one of the bookshelves, depicting a figure in an arabesque.

His chest ached, his feet itched. A ghostly weight settled against his left side, and his throat was constricting and unconstricting like it had forgotten how it was meant to work and the faintest, acrid tang rose at the back of it.

“The river I ended up in!” Marius protested, words that had no real heat behind them but a healthy dose of indignation.

“You’re the one who didn’t know how to ride a horse,” Éponine remarked, sitting between Grantaire and Cosette. Her hair was twisted into a high ponytail and eyeliner cut out from her eyes in sharp lines. He noticed both her and Cosette’s knees were touching, and Éponine was looking everywhere else in the room, eyes sharp and glinting but there was an undeniable flush on her cheeks.

He tried to pull himself out of his mind, out of the memory of aching but satisfied muscles and twisting and stretching and leaping- “What about the time you woke up after a transformation in the back of restaurant?” he threw in, to keep himself engaged at least. _Occupied_. “Your flat was blocks away and there wasn’t even a spare uniform.”

Collective groans swept through the group. Bahorel winced and crossed to room to give Éponine a sympathetic fist bump and Bossuet shuddered, rubbing the fabric of his shirt as if it were still unfamiliar to him. Musichetta rubbed his knee.

It untangled some of the heaviness in Grantaire’s chest. A year ago, Éponine would barely let anyone within five feet of her. She’d come far with Les Amis. It was good for her, to have a real family like them.

“Okay,” Éponine conceded, turning back on Grantaire, “but it’s not as bad as the time you set our first flat on fire.” She snorted, tipping her head back to down more of her sparkling cider.

Grantaire snorted as Courfeyrac, Musichetta, and Jehan’s eyebrows all rose past their hairline. “And it was worth it too, wasn’t it? That landlord deserved it, abstract dancing is twenty fucking times better with fire, and we got into better housing in the end.”

The words had slipped from his mouth before he could stop himself, because Grantaire couldn’t ever seem to _not_ say exactly what he didn’t want to. His friends' liveliness was ground to a halt like clogged gears. He could feel his heartbeat pound against his ribcage like a frantic bird and leaned back to swallow as much of his sparkling cider as he could in one gulp like it was cheap wine. One gulp, which meant all of it.

“You dance?” Courfeyrac asked, eyes alight with awe. And because Éponine was cringing behind her glass and Grantaire was still stuck in the moment when _dancing_ spilled from his mouth, of course Courf didn’t notice there was a sudden, crackling tension in the air. “R!” he whined. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

There was a faint glow from a streetlamp that flickered far in the distance, little streams of a yellowed light that glittered outside the window. Sitting just below said window, of course because Grantaire couldn’t even stare out a window in peace, Enjolras was watching him with a tangled expression. His brow slightly furrowed but, in rumination, lips pursed but not in anger.

Grantaire swallowed. “It wasn’t a big thing,” he lied right through his teeth because of course, now that he already scraped out his guts and let his friends consider them, he could find the right words. “And it was a while back, anyway.” Which was the first honest thing he’d said about it, the only honest thing he would say about it.

“I should have guessed!” Bahorel called from across the room. “You move like a dancer when you box, all grace and agility!” He laughed and it might have been more infectious if Grantaire hadn’t been so disquieted. Feuilly patted Bahorel’s knee as if to pacify him. The subtler context of tension was lost on Bahorel in a way that hadn’t been the times he’d seen Grantaire shirtless and deigned not to comment on the marring that lay beneath.

There was no mistaking the concerned glances from Combeferre, tucked next to Courfeyrac who had already drifted away as if envisioning the dreaded scenarios, Feuilly, where he was sitting beside Bahorel, and Jehan, their hair loose and cascading around their shoulders in powder orange waves.

His chest twisted into knots again, and he wished the sparkling cider he had already downed was wine. There was no pleasant buzz to ease the needles in his mind. He could have killed for any sort of alcohol, and knew if he did, Éponine would happily oblige to stab him without a second thought.

It was a blessing that Jehan launched into an animated, bright discussion about the community garden that they were on a committee for, and suitably distracted everyone from dancing or prying into a past Grantaire wanted, needed, to forget. And it was nice, Jehan was nearly quivering with excitement whenever they talked about it. An inclusive space, for humans and monster-blooded, and somehow it had _worked_. That, more than anything else, had surprised Grantaire, because equality between the two worlds never seemed to work out.

Even Enjolras, who couldn’t have differentiated a peony and a poppy, had a warm light in his eyes when Jehan had first made the announcement and, subsequently, anything that followed it.

Enjolras, who Grantaire was emphatically not glancing over at, who was the only one not watching Jehan’s bubbly gestures or laughing along with their latest narrations and mischiefs from the garden.

Grantaire left after Joly and Musichetta distributed a sleepy Bossuet between them on terms they all had to be up early by the next morning. Éponine paused as he collected his coat to silently reach out and glance at him with an unspoken question, _are you okay?_ that nobody else could see.

He smiled and laughed off his friends’ complaints of how early he was turning in. He was usually a part of the group that stayed so late their minds were muddled by a lack of sleep and it became the time for creating embarrassing stories as they had been recounting.

It was easier to unburden his chest by seeing them all smile, eyes crinkling, dimples on a few of their cheeks, hearing the different registers of their laughter. It was easier than explanation, honesty, melancholy, and worse, vulnerability.

He promised Jehan a text when he was back to his flat safely, promised Bahorel a makeup session for the one he’d flaked on, and promised Marius his commission would be done soon – he’d gotten a puppy and never stopped doting over her and had insisted he _needed_ a painting of her on his wall to display. (Said puppy was confined to Marius’ room, to everyone’s disappoint)

And as he slipped on his raggedy shoes and opened the door, Grantaire could feel Enjolras’ burning gaze from deeper inside the room.

_Why now have you noticed? Why does your gaze linger on someone you should cast aside? What has changed, Apollo?_

He asked none of this, did not turn to meet the evocative gaze that promised a shiver and enchantment that Grantaire desired to be rid of, fought to cast the ethereal man from his mind.

That, too, was a lie. He _desired_ to feel, to claim, the warmth he knew the fae possessed, sought an equal _give_ and _take_ but such wants would remain in folly.

Enjolras was not designed to _belong_ , but to conquer, perhaps guide, to lead. He was not for someone else, not to be a part of someone else.

But the heart was a treacherous instrument, and it _wanted_.

 

* * *

 

He had just come out of their dingy, employee’s only – and disgustingly out of date, the employees would often use their sleek, modern, public bathroom in place of the wreck that was theirs – bathroom from washing his hands off, still slightly blackened with ink and tingling from the last anti-curse rune he’d done, when he heard disgruntled voices drifting from up front.

Grantaire rubbed his hands over his face and paused for a mentality check. The parlour closed at eight on weekdays, but some stragglers seemed to believe that this meant they could come in at any time before eight for a walk-in – which were uncommon anyway since they were the only magical tattoo shop in the city and were usually booked up – and get a tattoo, or a rune, or a charm, or anything else. Even seven fifty nine, _pm_ , like they didn’t know that getting something inked wasn’t going to take a wave of a hand.

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re about to close,” he heard the desk clerk say, unsympathetically. That wasn’t something one could blame her for, this wasn’t the first, or second, or even fiftieth time this had happened.

“I’m not here for a tattoo,” came the silky, almost shy, and _definitely_ familiar response.

He ran a hand through his curls roughly, scraping against the stubs uncomfortably and making him wince. Grantaire made sure he had his messenger bag, sketchbook inside – Cosette had once joked that Grantaire’s sketchbook was like one of the horcruxes in Harry Potter, because it never left his side and he guarded it like the key to the gates of Heaven – before he entered into the front room.

Seeing Enjolras, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets – aggravating red, the colour of an angry sunset and startlingly un-fae-like, of course, because if Grantaire’s sketchbook was his horcrux, Enjolras’ red jacket was his – and face tinged pink, from a breeze or distress was unclear, Grantaire couldn’t decide if he looked more displaced here or at his flat.

“Apollo,” Grantaire greeted. Enjolras flinched, eyes widening slightly as Grantaire peered at him with obvious suspicion, but his shoulders visibly – and oddly – relaxed as Grantaire approached.

“I sought you,” Enjolras said, before Grantaire could even open his mouth to ask the question.

“So I see.” Grantaire did try not to frown, but he wasn’t any good at getting a handle on his emotions and did so anyway. He nodded to Floréal, behind the desk, and gestured Enjolras to the door. It was to some (a lot) surprise to him that Enjolras fell into step beside him as he moved to open said door. “Did Jehan speak of this place as well?”

Enjolras murmured gratitude under his breath as Grantaire held the door open for him, and patiently stood by as Grantaire followed at a sedated pace, still cautious and unsure of why Enjolras had come seeking _him_. “Courfeyrac, actually,” Enjolras said.

Once more, as Grantaire made his way down the pavement and cars hummed lazily by, Enjolras matched the rhythm of Grantaire’s steps. He stood close, close enough that Grantaire felt himself tense and hoped Enjolras simply wouldn’t notice. “I wasn’t aware Courfeyrac knew,” he mumbled, cheeks growing warm in the cooling evening.

On a good day, he was unprepared to talk to Enjolras. And a good day constituted _knowing_ that he would have to talk to Enjolras. Now, he felt utterly at Enjolras’ mercy, blindsided and dizzy beside the man as the ground seemed to shift between them, ever competing and uneven.

“You told him,” Enjolras said, but the uncertain twitch of his brows and lips and raise of pitch at the end of the sentence made it sound much more akin to a question.

“Ah,” Grantaire replied, as if that had clarified the situation to him. It had not. But he was less troubled over Courfeyrac – who would have known where he worked, regardless of being told or no, such as the way of Courfeyrac – than he was over Enjolras and his presence. “You said you had sought me?”

He glanced over to see the low, rustic streetlamps casting shadows over Enjolras’ divine features. It struck Grantaire that he had seen Enjolras little at night and had truly appreciated how he stood out in the dark mournfully less. And he was a sight – bright even covered by shadows, the background swallowed by squat buildings and a velvety black sky, stars twinkling against the abyss but Enjolras shining brighter than any of them. His hair glistening like silk, cheeks ever so slightly flushed as if glowing.

Grantaire was pulled from his reverie when Enjolras said, “I did.” And then offered him nothing more.

“And you have found me,” Grantaire conceded, raising an eyebrow. Enjolras cast him a look and Grantaire pretended he was someone with a normal pulse. “What shall you do with your prize, then?”

The baby pink rising high on Enjolras’ cheeks and the way he brushed back his curls away from his face, tucking behind his ear, on the side Grantaire walked as if to remove obstructions to their conversation-

Something caved in Grantaire’s chest, and the boundary he dared not cross over for fear of intimacy in painting Enjolras as he saw him dissipated like the smoke rising from a few scattered chimneys. He would return to his flat – alone? There was no scenario where Grantaire said enough things correctly that there was any different outcome, save perhaps for the one where Enjolras followed him because of whatever he had come seeking Grantaire for demanded it – and he would set up his little radio and get lost in music and colour as he painted the fae to the best of his ability.

His hands itched now, and he had to turn away from Enjolras’ mulling gaze, lest he do something foolish. Like run his hands through the locks of gold or trace the outlines of the rose dust across his cheeks.

“A favour,” Enjolras said, finally, as if he hadn’t yet decided why he had come when he clearly had. He would not have gone out of his way to attach himself to Grantaire for any less, Grantaire was as sure of this as he was of the necessity of breathing to live. Of a beating heart to pump blood through eager veins.

“Ensnare me in your suspense, Apollo. I have all night and bounds of patience, but I promise no spare bed,” he replied, heart in his throat and birds in his stomach where they most assuredly did not belong. He grinned though, because it wouldn’t do for Enjolras to think he was serious about such things.

He didn’t hold so much masochism.

“There is to be a gathering of a peaceful nature to discuss the merits of equality,” Enjolras started, the spark in his eyes a tell-tale sign of excitement, that this first puzzle piece of information was only the scraping of the surface. “It will be held at the agricultural centre, thanks to Jehan, and it will house opportunities for human and monster-blooded to voice opinions and engage with each other. I have been pushing on this for months, I have finally been granted audience and venue. We have, I should say, of course I’m not alone nor the only one who will speak, that is to say-” He stopped abruptly, the excitement suddenly snuffed out, and he turned to Grantaire.

But Grantaire had to jerk away his head, fearing what Enjolras might perceive from his expression. He swallowed, an acidic taste on his tongue and throat swelling as if to suffocate him. A phantom weight on his side, not Enjolras but to his left, pressing into what felt like the earth trying to claim him.

“How does this pertain to you dragging your toes beside me? It sounds more suited to Combeferre, to Courfeyrac, to Feuilly. To anyone who is not me.”

He was well aware, perhaps painfully so, of Enjolras’ gaze still boring into him as though he could unravel Grantaire with a look. And he could, in truth, though Grantaire had too much lopsided self-preservation to make this known to him. He was not sure if Enjolras was searching for something – the spark of principle or justice he seemed to believe Grantaire possessed – or if he was wondering over the tension in the words as they fell from Grantaire’s lips.

“I… would you grant me a boon then? I was to ask if you would be willing to design pamphlets, flyers, to boost coverage and representation. Of art, I mean, yours. To reach more people.” It was Enjolras’ turn to glance away, the furrow still curving his brow but now he was worrying the inside of his lip. Almost unnoticeable, but Grantaire was really quite gone and had been for some time, and of course he noticed the small indent to Enjolras’ lips and the working of his jaw.

There was a loud portion of him, most of him in fact, that wanted to pause on the pavement and recollect himself before saying, pointedly, _no_.

But there were several problems with this scenario. One, if he were to pause, it would be right in front of the new dance studio and then, Enjolras would surely notice something off kilter about him – Enjolras wasn’t blind. Oblivious, perhaps, on occasion, but not blind nor stupid.

Two, while he wanted nothing to do with this rally – Enjolras could call it as he liked, but he could only add layers on top of what it was at its core, not remove it altogether – his heart was much louder than the rest of him was. Grantaire, before even a cynic, was a romantic at his core. In a similar fashion he would paint layers over it, to save himself the hurt.

He said yes, before he could think on it more thoroughly. He said yes, and Enjolras lit up like one of the nearby streetlamps, like one of the stars overhead but really, he lit up like the sun and beamed down on Grantaire and it was all Grantaire could do to soak in his warmth.

And just as soon as he had said yes, Grantaire could pinpoint when this moment between them would shatter like a vase knocked from a mantle into dozens of fragments too little to recover. He could already hear the incoming question, even if he did not understand why or comprehend it quite so, before Enjolras had even opened his mouth.

But then, as sure at the sun rose in the East- “I… might also bid for your presence.” Enjolras’ voice was much quieter now, as if exchanging a secret with Grantaire, or telling him of something discomfiting or scandalous. “I know these are not proceedings you oft take place in, but I did hope-”

Something hot spread through Grantaire’s body, over his face but across his shoulder too. The phantom sensation prickled, and his ears buzzed and- “No.”

He did not, could not, look at Enjolras as he said it. He didn’t expect the fae to be disappointed by it, the lack of his presence, though maybe disappointed that Grantaire continued to wedge himself into cynical beliefs despite Enjolras’ best efforts to adjust such circumstances. That did not mean he wanted to see the transformation of warmth to irritation.

Instead, he stopped in his tracks and sucked a deep breath of cool evening breeze, and studiously ignored Enjolras stopping beside him.

“But if you could simply _observe-_ ”

“No. Shall I refuse you another way, perhaps? Nix, Apollo.” There was anger in Enjolras’ voice when Grantaire interrupted him and his mind spun. At least, perhaps, he could placate him, if nothing else. “I am working, and simply because I am comfortable does not mean I can afford time off right now. I have a de-runing that day and they’re pesky beasts. Now, unless you have more boons you require of me, this is my flat. Apparently, however, you know that now.”

He willed himself to look back at Enjolras. His eyes were kindling, the beginning of a fire, the sort of look he got whenever Grantaire provoked him and he was gearing up for one of their arguments. His brow, however, was not set in anger but in searching. He was appraising Grantaire, which was not something he was known to do when they got into spats.

Finally, he looked away and sighed, tugging a hand through his curls. “I bid you good night, then.” And, without sparing Grantaire another glance, he set off into the night like a harbinger of justice. Fair, beautiful, but severe, and sometimes terrible.

It took Grantaire longer than he would admit to pull himself away from watching Enjolras disappear. But so was their way; Grantaire admiring and wanting and angering, Enjolras, stoic and righteous.

Even with little beliefs, Grantaire was of the whole-hearted and achingly honest mind that Enjolras would be the one to bring change. The living embodiment of justice, of equality, like a young god coming into power.

It took longer than watching Enjolras disappear and finally retreating to his flat, for Grantaire to realise that Enjolras had never told him which day the rally was set on.

_Fuck._

 

* * *

 

Éponine was painting her nails a deep violet in the middle of the Musain, and Grantaire knew he wasn’t allowed to complain about the smell with the way he painted.

He also knew he wasn’t allowed to comment on the colour, after Cosette had mentioned it was her favourite. He should have been, the heavens knew that Éponine made fun of him about Enjolras enough times to warrant his retribution. But it did not reflect well to upset a werewolf and Grantaire experienced enough of it from her and Bahorel already.

“R!” Bossuet called from the other side of the table, where he had one arm wrapped around Joly, who was snuggled between him and Musichetta. Grantaire was half-tempted to retrieve his sketchbook to capture the moment – they truly were a sight. “What would you say to an immunity charm for Joly?”

Joly mumbled something about the ink being unethical and absently tapped his cane to his nose. Grantaire chuckled, content enough to be drawn away from dolefully watching Enjolras leaning over a stack of papers with Combeferre beside him and Courfeyrac suspiciously absent.

“A good luck charm would be in better suit, for you, do you disagree?” he prodded. Both Bossuet and Musichetta laughed heartily to the suggestion and Joly’s mouth twitched, protest against unethical inks not strong enough to suppress his mirth. “I could do as much,” Grantaire added after a moment, “perhaps something symbolic to water? Joly has talent for collecting his sea-faring lovers.”

It was an old joke by now but not a dying one. Grantaire had gifted Joly a pirate’s hat, and an anchor and seashell charm bracelet on separate occasions. Joly still wore the bracelet, to Grantaire’s surprise, even though he still rolled his eyes when anyone made comments about his selkie and dryad partners.

“That’s a sweet sentiment,” Jehan said beside Grantaire. They were wearing an oddly bright, rainbow patchwork sweater and their hair was set in a ponytail that draped over their shoulder like a cloak. They leaned on their arms, tucked in front of them on the table, and smiled as if they knew the world’s secrets. “You’d make such an enthralling poet.”

It was not the first time they had made such a suggestion and, as per usual, Grantaire snorted at it. “Spare the creative realm, Jehan. I’d make a tortured poet and you know it.”

Jehan’s eyes sparkled with an almost convincing innocence. “Not if you waxed about earthbound angels and hair as if from spun gold,” they said slyly. Éponine snorted, somehow successfully without disturbing her nails, and Grantaire scowled.

Sometimes he mused over a different life where he had conveniently failed to mention his veneration for Enjolras to Jehan. It was for naught, he knew, being so transparently enamoured the way he was.

Transparent to everyone but to Enjolras. Grantaire continued to lack the ability to decipher whether that was for better or worse.

“I must side with Jehan on this matter,” Bossuet snickered. It did not evade Grantaire’s notice that Bossuet sent a glance towards the triumvirate’s table (the _triumvirate_ triumvirate). “You could conquer the artistic world, R. Did you not speak of dancing at Courf’s last movie night? A fine master of the arts, you’d make!”

While Bossuet chuckled along to his own joke and Joly pressed an adoring kiss to his shoulder while he held Musichetta’s wrist where he could feel her pulse, Grantaire stilled and glanced down at his hands. He could feel the weight of Éponine’s gaze on him and ignored it.

“I heard talk of me and my famous house parties.” Courfeyrac materialised at their table and sat between Jehan and Musichetta with a grin that could warm any heart. It was a wonder he could be so silent, with cloven hooves that by all rights should have clicked against the hard surface below them.

“You need a bell,” Éponine told him, without seeming at all startled or concerned by his appearance.

Musichetta brushed a loose strand of hair that had escaped her mussed bun behind her ear, fingers tracing the silvery-blue sparkle she’d adorned on her cheeks. “We were speaking of R’s mastery of the arts,” she chimed in, leaning her head against Joly’s.

Courfeyrac’s face lit up and the look he sent Grantaire, like an uncontained ray of sunshine, made him want to sink down beneath the table and become a puddle. He knew the thoughts that were dawning on Courf’s mind and wanted nothing less than to speak of them.

“You never divulged more of your past as a dancer!” Courfeyrac exclaimed so loudly Grantaire could hear the creaking of the chairs as other patrons, as their friends, turned to observe the interaction. He tried very hard to resist the urge to bury his face into the table, hidden by his arms, and only surface again once everyone had left. “You must show us a routine sometime!”

“ _Or_ you could not assume you’re entitled to subject him to perform for an audience without his consent,” Éponine grumbled, her eyes pinning as she stared down Courfeyrac. He might not have taken the hint that Grantaire was uncomfortable, but he had the decency to frown and flush with embarrassment at Éponine’s comment.

Grantaire had slumped back in his chair and stared pointedly down, as if looking hard enough in one spot might get him out of this discussion. “’Pon, it’s ‘kay,” he mumbled, before chancing a glance up at Courfeyrac. “It has little consequence either way, I don’t do it anymore.”

Courfeyrac opened his mouth, eyes begging answers to more questions that Grantaire was certain he did not want to face, when someone cleared their throat beside him, and he jerked upright in his seat.

His saviour was – more startlingly than even not hearing him approach – Enjolras, who composed himself as neutral for all intents and purposes but had a honed curiosity in his eyes. As close as he was, and as the rays of a dying sun peered in through the windows, his eyes looked a shade of liberty’s blue Grantaire had used as highlight in the sunset painting he was almost finished with and glittered like traces of mica. Grantaire had started a draft of Enjolras walking beside him at night several days ago but now wanted this new angle, this new palette.

He refrained from suddenly snatching out his sketchbook and beginning on such, however.

“I apologise for the interruption,” Enjolras said, sending Courfeyrac one of his secretive glances, “Would it be presumptuous of me to inquire on the progress of the flyers I requested?”

“No!” Grantaire said quickly, perhaps a bit too loudly, but it was all he could do to stop from vocally blessing Enjolras for interjecting. Also, he was really very close, and that wasn’t entirely fair or productive to Grantaire’s train of thought. “I mean- no, not presumptuous. I have a few drafts with me. I planned on letting you review them after the meeting, which I suppose it is. Hold on.”

He reached into his bag slung over the back of his chair and feigned unawareness of the way Marius whirled around in his chair to level him with some combination of a pout and a glare. _Ah_ , Grantaire had perhaps let it slip his mind of Marius’ commission.

Also, Marius hadn’t deigned to bring him food and coffee.

Enjolras didn’t need to know any of that, however. Nor that Grantaire had hardly slept over the designs, determined to get them right even if he was against what they represented. Or, not represented, but what they could be enticing. What he could be playing a part in.

Still, he did not hesitate to hand over the sheets of papers – filled with visions of electric colours, of fists or circles of beings holding hands when fists seemed too violent, of abstract images of harmony – to Enjolras’ expectant hands. He tried to avoid contact, for fear it would spur some kind of foolish boldness in him, but the fingers of Enjolras’ left hand still graced his own.

He withdrew his hands perhaps a little too quickly, but Enjolras thankfully seemed not to notice.

“These will do perfectly,” Enjolras decided after a moment’s pause. He glanced over the sketches at Grantaire to gift him with the soft curve of his mouth.

( _His lips twitched, upwards, and maybe there were no teeth and it wasn’t more than a hidden, repressed sort of amusement but holy shit, Grantaire had caused that._ Except it wasn’t hidden this time, and Grantaire’s heart compressed in his chest and there was a moment where he might have forgotten what it was not to believe in something, someone-)

Grantaire coughed, warmth tickling the back of his neck. _Fuck_ , why must Enjolras smile at him, like that? Couldn’t he have- well- said they were inadequate, or something? He wanted to turn it around, make the softness in Enjolras’ eyes turn into flames of anger, and maybe he _was_ too masochistic for all the progress he’d made, but-

“Will you not consider coming, still?” Enjolras asked then, smiling fading but eyebrows curling with something that wasn’t hope, but was not _not_ hope.

(It hadn’t been the first time he’d been asked to come to a rally, or a protest, or whatever they wanted to call it. It had been the first time, in nearly three years, that anybody had _pushed_ for him to come)

The yarn around Grantaire’s chest tangled and, as though a kitten had knocked a skein off a shelf and dragged it across the floor, it grew knotted and painful.

“Apollo-” he sighed, and already Enjolras’ brows furrowed. “It’s a grand gesture, really, and you of all people could turn it into something worthwhile. But the foundation of such ideals is as stacking a deck of cards. Humans refuse to listen, even in their own species, but especially to us – no offence to Feuilly, Joly, or Marius.” He sent the aforementioned recipients apologetic glances. Feuilly waved his hand with a forgiving, gentle kind of smile, Marius seemed unconcerned, and Joly shrugged noncommittally. “Injustice and inequality are as familiar as their own skin. You ask them to shed it. It is human nature to want the comfort of familiarity, even if the habits are shitty.”

God, did he know the comfort of familiarity. The ignition in Enjolras’ eyes was the height of irony after his words and he knew it.

But somewhere behind him, Grantaire caught Combeferre’s gaze. His chin was tipped downwards, and eyes narrowed in a frown as he peered over his glasses at Grantaire. And- oh, oh _shit_ \- “To _us_?” Combeferre wondered.

He didn’t have to say any more. The group fell into silence and Grantaire stared down at the table, and most definitely was _not_ aware of how piercing Enjolras’ gaze was.

(When had he started thinking of himself as monster-blooded again? He tread a fine line, without doubt, but he’d adapted to the half of himself that would keep himself out of harm’s way, that tasted sweeter to his natural survival instinct. After the midnight walk, the auditorium-)

“I- from the perspective of- coming from a monster-blooded. Group. A Monster-blooded group, not-” Grantaire waved his hand vaguely and then turned to Éponine, a silent plead for aid. She had paused in her nail-painting to peer up over the table at Jehan, exchange a look Grantaire could not decipher, and then meet his gaze.

“Do you think such an event would have been agreed upon if humans were not willing to, at the minimal obligation, listen to what us monster-blooded may have to say?” Jehan wondered, more or less saving him from at least one conversation.

But Grantaire was already too agitated, too confused, and _scared_. “Yes!” he snapped, something he would come to regret but everything was spinning too fast. “Yes! They will dangle their fucking superiority in monster-blooded noses and snatch it back as quick as it is offered!” He turned on Enjolras then, who was just as undeserving of his wrath as Jehan. He didn’t register when he had stood up. “You are entitled to believe the best outcome because you have not seen the worst!”

“You spoke of humans as if you were not one,” Enjolras redirected, brushing over Grantaire’s accusations entirely. His eyes narrowed, but there was a fire alight in his eyes. “Your magic is different than Feuilly’s.”

Grantaire laughed and it flirted the line of hysterical. “Do not disgrace Feuilly, I am not as powerful as he,” he replied. He reached up a hand to tug at his curls and his nails caught the old scars where horns should have been.

“You do not deny what you said,” Enjolras pointed out. It sounded like an accusation on its own.

“What do wish to hear, Apollo?” Grantaire could hear more of their friends stand up, perhaps to interject and perhaps not. “That I’m a fucking mongrel?” If he had taken a moment to breathe, to remember they were not alone, he wouldn’t have said it. Especially not in front of Cosette, who was open about being of human and monster blood, who he did not direct his venomous tone at but had not taken care to separate himself.

“You are ashamed,” Enjolras said, but he was not shouting any more. He looked pained, as if Grantaire had struck him. Beside him, Combeferre reached out to grasp him arm and murmur his name in a tone that was a portion soothing and another warning.

Where Enjolras appeared hurt, Grantaire felt it strike in his chest. He should have shut his mouth, should have known Enjolras wouldn’t understand. And most of all, a part of him wished he’d have trusted his friends enough to simply tell them. But he was a coward, and he’d likely die one. Éponine only knew by exposure (and Jehan probably _knew_ , somehow).

So he did what he had gotten better at over the years to keep himself safe. Self-defence. Never mind that he would regret it later.

“Not all of us can be perfect, spoiled fae children,” he seethed. “Not all of us are privileged enough to walk away from a shelter, one of luxury, to attempt a fruitless fucking fight against a cruel elitist system that refuses to acknowledge, or to act upon its shittiness! You are _naïve,_ Apollo.”

“Don’t _call_ me that,” Enjolras spat back, though the fire had already died from his eyes and eclipsed by something that resembled a wounded animal. He was opening his mouth and Grantaire was already bracing himself-

“ENOUGH!” Éponine was suddenly shoving at Grantaire’s chest, pushing between them. Her eyes had shifted, a pale silver that glinted like the sharp edge of a knife, and her nails had grown pointed and they scratched against Grantaire’s chest where her hand forced him back. “Jesus, you two, I feel as though I’m fucking twelve again. What’s your fucking deals?”

An ugly, caustic feeling slithered up Grantaire’s throat from his chest, from his stomach, and spread through his veins like fire burning him alive. He was shivering, he realised, and his head pounded. It made his vision fuzzy and his heart skip a beat. He hadn’t had headaches like that for a while, since he’d tried to cut back on his drinking.

His eyes stung and he wasn’t sure what for. He wished, _fuck_ , he wished for the first time in a while that he was not such a cynic. That he did not possess such a conflicting balance of self-destruction and preservation, did not cling to such fits to protect himself. Did not feel so endangered when made uncomfortable.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to believe he might find his place again, settling into a group such as Les Amis. Perhaps he should have disregarded Éponine when she had dragged him along.

Perhaps he should not be so poisonous, so abrasive.

Enjolras’ expression reflected a sort of misery that Grantaire was all too familiar with, that he felt so deep it seemed to carve into his bones, to follow him as a thunderous raincloud. He had not expected such a look on the fae’s features. It did not suit him. Feuilly, who had joined Enjolras’ side some time during the dispute, said something most likely to mollify him. And Combeferre was a serene, calming presence at his side. Courfeyrac looked too stunned yet to provide much reaction.

Grantaire could hear his heart like a feral beast in his chest and swallowed hard. He hated the unknown waters swirling around him and Enjolras, wished they could stay on stable ground. He hated the rapid dissolution he caused because of it more. The destruction. He had put a fucking blinding smile on Enjolras’ face all of two times and now this twisted- he wasn’t sure what to call it. But _he_ had put it there, and he despised himself for it, the way he had despised himself for drinking and not being able to stop, the way he despised himself for not being able to move on.

He pushed Éponine’s hand away and she scrutinised him. She was faster than him, especially at the edge of a transformation, and he knew she would stop him from doing something stupid.

 _Too fucking late for that_ , he chortled to himself acidly.

“Enj, I-” but then Enjolras’ gaze was on him again and Grantaire almost suffocated on his own air, his own desperation and hatred and- “ _Fuck_ ,” he choked out. He had meant to apologise, meant to try to make good on his promise to himself, to Éponine and Jehan, that he would be better.

Grantaire did none of that. For the second time in two weeks, he turned from his friends, people he so desperately (too desperately, too much, he was always _too much_ ) wanted to belong with, and fled.

Apologies began to spill from his lips like waterfalls once he had severed enough space between him and the Musain, but he lacked the deserving company to heed them. As if to fall into place with them, tears ran in rivulets down his cheeks and all he could do was let his feet guide him back to his flat.

If asked, he would not have been able to put to words why he was so distraught. There were many fragments, that might have been able to form some understanding but none of them fit together.

Five minutes from his flat, it began to rain. It was a bitter, icy rain, and there was nothing beautiful about the glitter it left on the pavement or buildings.

He was so cold. Grantaire wished fervently, as he hurried towards the building his flat was tucked away in, that he could just stay somewhere in the middle of the frost and the fire.

 

* * *

 

He called into work sick and proceeded to shut himself in his flat for three days.

It was only half a lie. He felt miserable. It just wasn’t a cold or a fever or the flu, and he wasn’t sure he’d be allowed the days off – which he couldn’t afford but neither could he get any farther than opening his front door before he retreated back into his flat like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs – if he told them his mind was nauseatingly dizzy and loud.

To his credit, he hadn’t stayed in bed the whole time. He’d finished Marius’ painting and the sunset and couldn’t help but feel a little accomplished after both. Though, he had felt compelled rather than inspired for Marius’, because he had found a Tupperware container of cupcakes outside his door on the second day of his self-imposed isolation.

(Éponine must have told him about that trick, and, if he was any judge, Cosette must have decorated them. Marius was a surprisingly terrific baker, but had little skill for art unless it was writing)

Still, it had gotten the job done. He hadn’t told Marius yet, and the painting was sitting sadly against the wall near his easel. He had been tempted to ask Éponine to bring it over to him but knew she wouldn’t. “Bring it to him yourself,” she’d say, because she knew how lonely he got when he exacted himself to seclusion.

It was a bad habit of his, developed long before he’d been pulled to Les Amis meetings. It was comforting and familiar in all the worst kinds of ways, but the guilt ate at him like a moth upon clothes from the inside out. He shouldn’t have yelled at Jehan or Enjolras, shouldn’t have cursed half-breeds in front of Cosette.

He should have apologised, should have stopped while he was ahead (but he’d never been very good at that. It’d been almost three years since he’d taken up residence in the corner of the Musain on Éponine’s insistence, since he’d met the most driven, passionate, exciting group of people he had ever had grace to. It’d been almost three years and still, he did not know what to do with the people who called him their friend).

Which was why the sudden raps at his door made Grantaire nearly fall off his sofa where he was tucked under several layers of blankets. He’d been drifting in and out of sleep for what felt like hours, drowsy from the _tick, tick, tick_ of his clock and the soft, classical music he’d put on in the background. He couldn’t stand the silence, which was why he’d gotten the clock in the first place.

Silence was more deafening than crowds. Sometimes. (He didn’t like too much noise either)

It hadn’t been the first knock he heard, however, but these were much more insistent than the ones that had come before them (Marius had knocked when he’d dropped off the cupcakes, or maybe it had been Cosette because he had felt the gentle thrall she left in her wake when he’d gone, later, to investigate. Jehan had knocked, texted him even to make him open the door. Grantaire said he was at work and even though he was sure Jehan knew he was lying, they hadn’t pressed).

But he’d ignored all the others. Grantaire pulled the blankets over his head and squeezed shut his eyes once more, hoping the noise would go away soon. He wasn’t hungover, but it felt like he was. A part of him wished he was.

To his relief (and his disappointment, if he was being honest. As bad as the guilt was, it had nothing on the hungry fangs of loneliness) the knocking stopped shortly after. He let out a long-drawn sigh and resigned himself to lying awake for some time now that he’d been disturbed. There was a dull throb at the back of his head and where it had been a minor nuisance a moment before, now he knew he would not be able to sleep again as it hammered ruthlessly against his skull.

And then he heard the miniscule scratching noise and a _click!_ which was all the warning he received before he heard his front door swing open.

His heart skidded to a halt in his chest and his eyes were wide under his blankets. Not a robber, surely, since they’d knocked so thunderously moments before. Éponine? She had a spare key to his flat on her insistence, because she knew he was prone to do stupid things such as locking himself away.

Someone laughed quietly, muffled by the blanket, and- “That would be the paint fumes.” _Jehan_. But- why did- how-

“It’s abhorrent. Has he never heard of cleansing spells? Or candles? Or _windows_?” If Jehan’s voice had been confusing, Courfeyrac’s was even more foreign. _Why_ were Jehan and Courfeyrac here? How had they gotten in? Borrowed Éponine’s key? Was Éponine here too?

“Courf’s not in the wrong. Go find R, I’ll take care of the windows.” The voice was feminine, but it was sweet like a wind chime and definitely not Éponine’s. It was Musichetta.

If Grantaire’s head had been foggy before, it was swimming now. He listened to the soft tap of Musichetta’s feet against the carpet, disappearing into the kitchen, before he worked up enough energy to peer out from the blankets. He couldn’t, of course, see over the back of the sofa, as far nestled down as he was, but it made his voice more clear when he croaked, “What the _fuck_.”

The music shut off. Grantaire wasn’t sure if he had done that subconsciously or if someone else had, but it left the room stifled by a silence that was thick like humidity and-

Jehan came around his sofa and paused when they saw Grantaire buried in blankets. Their bright expression immediately fell, and they glanced up – at _Courfeyrac_? – before sitting on the sofa next to his feet. “Oh, R,” they said empathetically, and patted his knee.

Their tone told Grantaire in more detail what he looked like than a mirror would have – which was somewhat empty, he’d enchanted all his mirrors to fog over on his first day of the self-subjected solitude. He groaned and fought the urge to cover his head again with the blankets. _Why are you here_ , he didn’t ask, because his tongue and throat felt like sandpaper. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything to drink. Or eat.

From the kitchen came the squeal of his windows opening and then the sweet trill of bird song and cars whistling down the street. He probably should have opened them, at some point, with as much as he had been painting.

A hand sifting through his curls made Grantaire flinch and he glanced up to see Courfeyrac’s mouth turn into an _o_ as his fingers grazed against the jagged buds on both sides of his skull. His chest seized up and Courfeyrac met his gaze, before grinning like nothing had happened, giving Grantaire’s curls a ruffle, and pulling away his hand.

(It was a wonder it had taken this long, Grantaire tried to reason with the way his stomach started flipping and a slight tremor gripped his fingers. Courfeyrac was incredibly physically affectionate, and though he and Grantaire hadn’t spent so much one on one time together, Grantaire had found the satyr curled against his side more than once)

“You need coffee,” Courfeyrac announced. Grantaire was surprised to find that, while his tone was loud and bubbly, the volume didn’t bother him or his headache. By all means, it should have, if someone else had come into his flat nearly shouting the way Courf did, he would have shoved them out and shut the door.

Before Grantaire could protest, could sit up, or even ask why they all were there, Courfeyrac was cheerfully prancing into his kitchen. Grantaire could hear the moment he stepped onto the tile because the sound of his hooves clicking echoed through the house.

Jehan watched him as he slowly eased himself up, still cocooned in blankets because with the sudden, unexpected invaders, it was all he had to shield himself with. Their hair was back in a loose ponytail, and they wore a wreath of flowers that seemed to sprout from their scalp (and likely did). Grantaire winced as his joints creaked and ached from remaining prone for so long and then settled back into his respective corner of the sofa.

“The fuck is going on?” he asked Jehan, who had started playing with the tips of their hair. They were worried, he realised. _About me._ “How did you gain entrance?”

“I was holding out optimism that you would be able to explain that,” Musichetta said as she waltzed into the room and sat on the only other seat in the room, an old and far-too-big armchair that made her look small for all her height. When she glanced over at Grantaire, she frowned. “There has always been mysteries about Jehan’s person, and then there’s picking locks. You look like you’ve crawled out of a dark corner of hell, if I might add,” she said in a tone that suggested there was no _might_ in adding that last part at all.

He glanced at Jehan, squinting. The coffee machine whirred to life in the other room and it was not unlike the sound of a speared hog, crying out the way it did and making terrible grinding wails.

“Thanks,” he grumbled at Musichetta, his voice raspy like he hadn’t used it for several days. Which he hadn’t. He ruffled his curls as if to recover them from whatever Courf had done. “Why do possess the ability and knowledge to pick locks?”

To his surprise, a pale, cherry flush spread across Jehan’s cheeks as they shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I?”

And then there was quiet that was only interrupted by the _click click, click click_ , of Courfeyrac’s hooves and, the ticking of his clock, and the awful sputtering of the coffee maker. It wasn’t even broken when Courfeyrac returned to the living room, but Grantaire could see the falter in his grin, the slight dip of his brows as he took in the scene before him.

It was that expression that broke something inside of Grantaire and he wasn’t able to fish for the right words before he blurted, “Why have you all come?” And then quieter, glancing down at his hands because he didn’t want to see their expressions, he asked, “Did ‘Ponine persuade you?”

There was a stillness that made it feel like the room had frozen in time. He shivered under his blankets, even though he wasn’t cold, and wrapped his fingers around handfuls of blankets. He needed something to ground him in the moment, or he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t float away.

“None of us needed coercion to be here,” Jehan said, and Grantaire glanced up in surprise at the edge to their tone. They were frowning at him, freckles scrunching over their nose at their expression. Then they softened. They looked a little hurt. “Are we not allowed to dwell in your company? Not allowed to seek after it?”

Grantaire blinked. He had wondered if Éponine might have nudged them over, she could convince anyone of anything, but glancing between Jehan, Musichetta, and Courfeyrac, he already knew that wasn’t the case. Still, he hadn’t considered they had come over only for him.

He felt both heavy and weightless at the same time and it was- odd, his lungs felt strangled and yet he had no trouble taking a deep breath. And hidden under it all? A warmth, blossoming like a spring bud where his heart had been.

“No,” he said, like he hadn’t just spent the last three days in a haze of grey and fog. He watched Musichetta grab an empty glass off his coffee table that he didn’t realise was there. Her dark cheeks glittered a pale blue and water filled the glass like she was holding it under an invisible tap. Then she held it out and Grantaire gratefully summoned it to the hand he’d dug out from underneath his blankets.

As he tipped his chin back to drink, Courfeyrac bounced over and collapsed onto the empty cushion in between Jehan and Grantaire. “Fabulous, we’re all sorted! Now,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of nail polish that had no business fitting into said pockets, “I’ve everything planned ahead, and none of you are allowed a word under the exception it is a _fun_ proposal.”

“Cookie dough is fun,” Musichetta suggested, tying her frizzy black mane into a bun. Courfeyrac beamed as he set the bottles of nail polish on Grantaire’s coffee table.

“Cookie dough _is_ fun,” he agreed, readily. Then, he turned with a grin to Grantaire and all the tension still wrapping desperately around his shoulders evaporated with that look. “Are you ready for the second-best fucking night in you’ll ever experience?”

Grantaire found that he couldn’t hide the smile that warmed his face, even if it hurt a little because his lips were cracked and dry. Jehan threw rose-coloured lip balm over Courf’s head, as if they could read Grantaire’s mind. As he put it on, he frowned at Courfeyrac. “Second best?”

Courfeyrac considered the nail polish with a more reserved smile. His shoulders were twitching though, and Grantaire knew he was trying not to laugh. “We might have arrived to set up a nice candlelit dinner for you to charm Enjolras with and a shield or several for a long night, but that seemed like a you problem. Or a last resort.”

He had just taken another long drink of water as Courfeyrac spoke and spit it all back out into his glass as Jehan and Courfeyrac started to snicker. Musichetta offered him a sympathetic smile but she was grinning too and eventually had to cover her mouth with her hand at the dark flush across Grantaire’s cheeks. He knew that his skin, dusty as it was, unluckily wouldn’t cover that kind of blush.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Courfeyrac leaned back and shrugged innocently after a moment. “On an entirely unrelated note, Ferre happens to vacate their flat on Tuesday evenings, and I have it on good authority that Enj is prepared for any surprises. By good authority, I do mean I prepared him. With armour.”

Musichetta burst into full-on giggles and Jehan’s cheeks turned a healthy shade of scarlet as they laughed. Grantaire buried his face in his blanket and it did absolutely nothing to cool his face or stave off the frankly breath-taking and _inappropriate_ murals that came to mind. Which made his fingers twitch and _God_ , if that possibility wouldn’t be a stunning painting.

If painting Enjolras in the soft, domestic moments, or moments of glory where he was already on display for everyone to see was creepy, that would be a whole new level. Grantaire wasn’t that atrocious.

Thankfully, they dropped the subject, after they’d all stopped _laughing_. It was embarrassing, how obvious his affections were, but seeing them all so full of joy, even at his expense, was worth even the worst kinds of embarrassment.

(Still. He had it _bad_ for Enjolras. It seemed cruel to dangle those kinds of ideas in front of his imagination, especially because he can’t seem to dislodge his foot from his mouth. In his head, he was a cynic through and through, as familiar as the bones in his body and the magic at his disposal. In his heart? The optimism was painful, but he never pretended otherwise, and he hid it like the most precious of gems. His ribs were a vault, and it was safe, but it was a cage, and it hurt)

By the end of the night, his nails were azure with flecks of gold – he felt bad for not knowing how skilled Courfeyrac was at painting nails beforehand. He made it up the only way he knew how, making Courfeyrac’s a canvas and making them as wild and extravagant as Courfeyrac. He’d put tiny fangs on one of them, and Courf had stared at it affectionately before throwing his arms around Grantaire and thanking him profusely – and they’d gotten through both Princess Diary movies. His kitchen smelled like cookies and coffee after the disaster of all four of them trying to bake at once (they were somehow still edible, but not at all pleasing to look at), and he had more cookies and cupcakes then he could eat in a month.

That didn’t matter though. Grantaire felt lighter and warmer than he had for some time and he realised he needed this. He needed the company, needed to belong for a while. Not to say he didn’t belong in Les Amis but- this was light-hearted and relaxing. They weren’t trying to figure out the ethics of human morality, weren’t writing and calling government officials to change their minds about monster-blooded.

Nobody mentioned the incident at the last meeting, and nobody mentioned the coming rally in three days either. Courfeyrac didn’t try to bring up his aversion to dancing, nor the stubs on his head. Grantaire didn’t know what kind of impression that had given him and wasn’t sure what kind he hoped they’d imprinted on him.

(The only moment that had gotten especially tense was when Grantaire had tried to stand up from the sofa and immediately, his legs had buckled beneath him. Thank God for Courfeyrac’s lightning instincts, which he had no doubt proved useful to Combeferre and Marius for very different reasons, or he probably would have crashed into his coffee table. Maybe he shouldn’t neglect to care for himself like that. It wouldn’t be the first time)

He grabbed Jehan’s arm as they were all putting on their jackets, however. Jehan looked up at him with a smile but it faded with whatever they saw on Grantaire’s face.

Grantaire watched Jehan as he spoke, but he hoped everyone knew he was addressing them too. “I’m sorry.”

Jehan blinked, hideous yellow and blue polka dot jacket partway up their arms. “What for?”

Grantaire sucked in a breath and let go of Jehan, finding solace in the glint of his nails. “For Tuesday. I- It was not in my intentions to lose my shit. I’m… I thought I had perhaps- that-” He reached up to tug his curls in frustration but Jehan grabbed his wrists before he could and smiled like they understood. Just like that, like they _understood_.

“Don’t beat yourself up over the past,” they said quietly, putting his arms back at his sides and then reaching up to pat his cheek gently. “Everyone was concerned over you. When you failed to attend the latest meeting and neglected contact with anyone. They’ll be delighted to know you’re all right.”

It filled a hole Grantaire didn’t know was gaping in his chest. He glanced over at Courfeyrac and Musichetta, and they both smiled and dipped their heads to him. Musichetta looked as radiant and kind as always but there’s something in Courfeyrac’s eyes under their usual sparkle that made him pause. It was fear- and Grantaire realised, for the first time, they weren’t just bullshitting him, it was never an attempt to make him feel better. They were scared (and if Courfeyrac was scared and trying to hide it, what must the others have felt?).

“Yeah,” he said, smiling a little absently. But he was smiling. It was tight, but he meant it, and he had forgotten what it felt like for a little while.

“Simply because we came here does not count as an out for contacting everyone else, you are aware,” Courfeyrac chimed in, and his voice was cheerful and bright as always, burnt auburn waves bouncing as he nodded. Marius’ painting was covered and tucked underneath his arm. He’d tried to get Grantaire to come himself but Grantaire was pretty sure he had to sleep now for a while – _real_ sleep, if he could catch it. And then crawl out of his secluded pit of despair and properly communicate.

Musichetta cleared her throat and raised an eyebrow at Grantaire when he glanced over at her. Her dark cheeks glistened blue in the dirty lighting. “You must call Enjolras. Everyone’s worried, don’t get the wrong idea, but you were not the only one who suffered after that spat. And you’ve been stepping on each other’s toes more frequently as of late. The debates, everyone can handle, but everyone’s poorer for the fighting.”

The thought that Enjolras had undergone even a trace of the same despair Grantaire had gone through sat ill in his stomach. He did not like the idea that Enjolras could fall under kindred misery, but it was all the worse if he had been the one to bring it upon him.

He was given one last hug from everyone and a demand for a promise, which he did, to take care of himself and make sure everyone was of the same mind he was alive and all right.

Twenty minutes, perhaps, had passed, and he had set onto the task of cleaning up the impromptu house visit, when his eyes began to water unwarranted.

He set the mixing bowl he had held down into the sink and lifted himself onto one of his countertops to sit. Tears stung his eyes and made the world a blurry mirage of colours and abstract shapes.

They were not, he had concluded after a few minutes, unhappy tears. They were not the same that he had already shed, but a kind that had taken root and become an overwhelming warmth that was nearly threatening to burst in his chest.

It had never been a mistake, Grantaire resolved, to join Les Amis. It had never been even close to a mistake. He had not treasured them – his _friends_ – as he should have.

He was not alone anymore. He did not have to suffer the same as he once had.

(It was still taking getting used to, but he had the most pathetic kinds of odds stacked up for him and he had resolved into believing long ago that it was loneliness that would kill him eventually)

 

* * *

 

‘Calling Enjolras’ turned into texting Enjolras, because Grantaire felt better but it did not resolve his cowardice – or everything else, for that matter – and while it seemed there was no ill will between them, they also hadn’t gotten much farther than texting short, stilted apologies to each other.

The rest of Les Amis had varying reactions. Éponine had scolded him for falling back on old habits and from the background, Cosette had shouted that he better not think of scaring everyone like that again (and then Gavroche had stolen the phone and complained at length that Grantaire had left him without a partner for cards, and that he’d had to steal Cosette from Éponine except that Cosette was terrible at cards and Éponine was winning every game and it was miserable. Also, that it was entirely unfair that Courfeyrac was now dating Combeferre and also, that it was gross).

Joly and Bossuet were, understandably, more prepared for his call. That did not negate the hour of Joly lecturing him on taking care of himself and then Bossuet finally telling him to hush and distracting him by recounting adventures of their latest trip to the nearby, private beachfront. Joly was quickly diverted and chimed in occasionally, usually to correct Bossuet but once to chastise him for getting his flippers tangled in plastic and making Musichetta dive after him and drag him back ashore.

He had hardly said _hello_ to Marius when he was interrupted by his sudden shower of praises for the painting. Grantaire flushed deeply and had to set his phone down just to bury his hands in his face until he could coerce Marius into shutting up before he combusted. In the background, he could hear the delighted yaps from Lark in apparent agreement.

It was just after the call to Marius that he called Combeferre. Marius had informed him, after Grantaire had convinced him to settle down, that Courfeyrac was over at Combeferre and Enjolras’. He had been nervous about that call – how could he not? The man was Enjolras’ best mate, and likely wasn’t about to shower him in artistic praise or scold him for neglecting his own health or complain about dating his own boyfriend – but knowing Courfeyrac was over there made it a little easier.

(He was terrified Enjolras was there more than he was Combeferre. His options appeared as calling Combeferre and risking Enjolras being there, or calling and at least having Courfeyrac as a mediator for one or both of them)

As it turned out, Combeferre was less disgruntled about the last meeting Grantaire had attended and more so that Grantaire had evidently called at a _horrific_ time (his voice was heavy and grumbling and Grantaire could hear Courfeyrac snickering in the background and _God_ , he wouldn’t have minded the abyss to swallow him whole in that moment). He did admit he was pleased that Grantaire had called – as confirmation he was okay, not so much his timing – and, like Musichetta, insisted he talk to Enjolras.

(Which he did not do)

Bahorel had shouted at first – loud enough that Grantaire could set his phone on his counter without switching the setting to speaker and still hear him – but then his voice grew quiet and he had muttered about how stupid Grantaire was and that he was never to disappear like that again. Feuilly, thankfully, stepped in and calmed him, but then decided to enter a one-on-one conversation with Grantaire and inquired grimly over his health and if he needed any help.

He got away from the call and Feuilly’s good intentions (he was the first to mention the rally and despite the honesty and warmth in his purpose, it still made Grantaire’s skin crawl) with the promise that he would come to the next meeting and _yes_ , he would meet Bahorel for their boxing session. Which he had been threatened over, for missing two so close together.

After cleaning his place up, reviving half-dead plants he’d neglected care for – all gifts from Jehan, in an attempt to force responsibility of something else living on him. It worked, for the most part – and all the phone calls, he’d been too exhausted to leave his house. He knew he should have tried, he needed to be around people because the only nourishment his greedy heart accepted was company. But even the thought made the weariness settle deep into his muscles, his bones, and he soon forgot why he had been trying.

(Éponine brought over Cosette on Saturday. It was nice, they respected his need for the quiet and the companionship. Cosette had braided Éponine’s hair, and he wondered when the two would get over themselves and admit how they felt)

Sunday night, he spent most of his time enchanting the sunset painting. He illusioned it so that the pavement glittered an elegant duality of silver and gold, and that the mist truly looked as though the Heavens had opened up and the haze of that rain was caught in the rays of the sunset.

He was, admittedly, not so often proud of his own works. Commissions were always a neutral sort of zone, which was mostly what he painted, but personal projects such as the sunset were rooted deep inside of him, in his heart, and they were far easier to critic and loathe when they did not come out in the right fashion.

It was Monday that he returned to work at the tattoo parlour. There had been a niggling worm of doubt in the back of his mind and it wasn’t as though he expected to be fired the moment he stepped in, only that he wouldn’t have been surprised if he had. But Floréal simply eyed his when he had walked in and pointed him into the back.

The day was long and exhausting and demanded every drop of concentration Grantaire possessed. At noon, he had a de-runing on a client and it left him mentally exhausted and contemplating a nap in the back room. The niggling in the back of his mind, oddly, did not leave him, and only opened a discomforting ache in his chest like he’d forgotten something.

At the end of his shift, as he was stepping out of the shop and sucking in a deep breath of the fresh, albeit humid, late summer breeze, he realised what was making his chest ache so. _The rally_.

In truth, he’d forgotten about it, for the most part. Or, tried to anyway. The ache was worry, and it made him feel only minimally guilty about how his friends must have experienced after he’d shut himself away.

He attempted to walk it off, to consider the sun as it set and cast a new mosaic across the sky. But the colours looked dull and his imagination was sapping away at his strength. Enjolras had considered it a “peaceful gathering”, but what if it wasn’t? What if one of those humans who had supposedly come to hear about equality decided they would only be equals in death?

(Gavroche had said that once to him. It had startled him into silence, and his heart rate had started obnoxiously beeping at him from the monitor next to him. Gavroche had never once broken his gaze.

“Everyone’s equal when they’re dead,” Gav had said. There was nothing to suggest he was trying to be reassuring, and Grantaire couldn’t fathom a reason he would be telling him this while he’d been lying in ICU for a nearly two months, only recently gaining more stability.

He must have looked pale when Éponine had returned though, because she had frowned deeply at him and forced him to down an entire glass of water. The IV wasn’t enough, she said, after he’d been dehydrated near to death and come down with the kind of infection you had nightmares about)

Grantaire was waist deep in visions of all the ways the venue could go south. His hands were trembling and all he could imagine was the red of Enjolras’ jacket hiding the awful stain of blood (which was already outlandish, fae blood was the very darkest shade of red and it shimmered. Not even a black jacket could hide that stain).

He was nearing his flat when his phone trilled, muffled by his pocket. He nearly dropped it as though his fingers had forgotten the movement of grip but managed to hold onto it as he unlocked it with quivering fingers. His heart stuttered in his chest when he realised he had a notification from his contact _ange_.

Enjolras never contacted him unless it had to do with a meeting. Grantaire had no impression of who had attended the venue but assumed the rest of Les Amis had. If Enjolras was texting him, surely something had gone wrong? Surely, being the only one who had not attended, there was a reason it was Grantaire Enjolras was contacting?

 

> 20:21pm. ange: Are you busy?

 

There… had been a multitude of panicked, emergency style texts he had imagined Enjolras sending. He had expected a longer text too, that would have explained the situation in as little detail as possible while still _explaining_ it without leaving anything out. It was frustrating, that Enjolras did that, except for when it was about him. Or Grantaire.

Unless Enjolras was only going to tell him the emergency if he wasn’t busy. Which seemed like a horrifically Enjolras thing to do (if he got himself killed because he was bleeding out one day and had the nerve to ask someone else if they were “busy”, without divulging the situation, Grantaire would become a saint simply to be sanctioned into Heaven to kill him a second time. If one could kill an angel twice)

 

> 20:23pm. to ange: ,,,is that a trick question? but no

 

> 20:23pm. ange: Why would that be a trick question?

 

> 20:24pm. ange: Never mind. Can you come over?

 

Grantaire had to stop to prevent himself from tripping as he stared down at his phone. The trick question had been more of a jest but now he was starting to soberly consider it as such. He hesitantly began a shaky reply when Enjolras sent an unfamiliar address.

 

> 20:26pm. ange: I’ll explain when you get here. If you can come, of course.

 

> 20:27pm. to ange: yeah ok w/e im coming

 

> 20:27pm. to ange: …enj you ok?

 

He had to ask, even if none of the messages seemed frantic. Still, whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. Right?

 

> 20:29pm. ange: yes? why?

 

He pocketed his phone without answering. His stomach was constricting into knots and he felt more than a little nauseated. That was the most contact he’d had with Enjolras since their fight at the Musain and now he wanted them to talk in person. Privately? God, Grantaire wasn’t sure he could handle that. He prayed the rest of the triumvirate would be there. Wherever ‘there’ was.

To attempt to suffocate some of his nerves, frying like he’d just been electrocuted, he paused at his flat to change out of clothes that smelled like disinfectant and chemicals. The tattoos were even worse than painting, enough to bother even him, and he didn’t want to give Enjolras some sort of second-hand headache.

His ivy tattoo that twisted up his whole left arm, blooming from his wrist and spiralling upwards, rustled as if caught in a breeze as he stepped back outside. He had put on a sleeveless hoodie and jeans and it left none of the mural colouring his arms to the imagination. (His favourite was a tie between the little dragon perched just above his elbow that spat fire when he was frustrated, and the pair of wings sprouting from his shoulder blades that had once been symmetrical. They were small and whimsical, and the right one still fluttered in all kinds of different moods, but certainly not angelic. Enjolras, he imagined, would be the one to don feathery wings like that)

The sky was ink black and the air stuffy when he pulled into the small shopping mall parking lot. There were only three entrances. One for a 24/7 diner with neon lighting that cast the area around it in a halo of illumination that almost hurt to look at. The second for a movie rental building with all the lights out. The third, the last, in the corner between the two that only read _Lamarque_ in the front window. There looked to have been a word following it, but if there had been, it was illegible now.

 

> 21:21pm. to ange: diner or lamarque?

 

> 21:21pm. ange: Lamarque. hang on I’ll come up.

 

Grantaire shut his car off after he put his phone away. It took little time for him to catch movement on the other side of the tinted glass behind the word _Lamarque_ and even less for the door to open. Grantaire choked on the air blowing into his face from the A/C.

Enjolras was not wearing his favourite red jacket. Or anything red, for that matter (it wasn’t even his favourite colour, Courfeyrac had told him once). He was adorned only in plaid grey button-up and royal purple pants that might have been sweatpants but looked suspiciously like pyjamas. His hair was down and, in the fluorescent glare of the diner nearby, looked nearly silver.

He was a painfully domestic sight and even so, he still looked more beautiful than anything Grantaire had ever had the grace to lay eyes upon. He was no longer severe, not the way he seemed to float over the ground. It was soft, and the revelation broke Grantaire’s heart a little.

It was with that conclusion that he came to another: in agreeing to meet with Enjolras in this empty-appearing, tiny suburban area outlet, he was fucked. Completely, thoroughly fucked. Not even in a good way, not even when Enjolras looked like _that_.

(It hurt, because Enjolras was so _fucking_ beautiful. It was not admiring a statue, as he had assumed, but rather looking into the sun. Sometimes, Grantaire felt he needed to avert his gaze, but Enjolras was so very bright and captivating and he would go blind just to look upon him. Grantaire was still not allowed to touch, but he had been wrong in his continued comparison of Enjolras and cold marble.

He was sure, at this point, that it was not good genetics, or even fae allure that had moulded him to such grace. When he had first met Enjolras, he had been as a sculpture – cold and pale and hard; ultimately unforgiving. He had been beautiful then but distant, too fierce a beauty and yes, even Enjolras had not been able to take his breath away back then.

And then he had grown, and all Grantaire had done was grown fucked as time rolled by. Enjolras became more beautiful but not by age. Maybe it was magic, maybe it was understanding or at least knowing him, but Enjolras grew more radiant as he grew more passionate, more kind, more forgiving. His heart was not in a cage like Grantaire’s, but open and giving and so fucking bright it spilled out onto his skin, into the air, and it was like truly breathing for the first time.

Despite the snags, his passion still boiling into anger when pushed, he was even better a person now than when Grantaire had first met him. The man used to be a reason to be inebriated and then he became a reason not to be. Enjolras was like a giant, golden fucking butterfly, and all Grantaire had achieved was splitting his cocoon open far enough to see him. That was progress, he supposed. They had been fighting less until now, they’d both grown less angry, at the world, at each other. They should have expected pitfalls eventually)

He forced himself out of the car, the only safe haven between him and Enjolras, with deliberately slow movements. The breeze which had felt nice before was stifling now, wrapping around his lungs like greedy fingers.

When he shut the door, Enjolras suddenly stopped in his approach. For a moment, it had almost appeared as though he had nearly tripped over his own foot. Now, he blinked, staring at Grantaire as though surprised to see him. Enjolras looked faintly dazed, as he absorbed the sight of Grantaire (but why?). Then, finally, he crossed the gaping distance between them.

“Hi,” he said, when Enjolras didn’t speak.

It pulled him from whatever reverie he’d fallen into, and Enjolras met his gaze. “Hi,” he agreed, and sounded strangely breathless for someone who did not appear as though he had been running or performing strenuous activity. Then, he raised his hand and waved it vaguely in Grantaire’s direction. “I must admit, I have never seen much of the extent of your tattoos,” he said. Then, squinted, and leaned far too close to allow Grantaire proper breathing space. “Are they moving?”

He had to wait until Enjolras pulled away, when Grantaire did not respond, before Grantaire could sufficiently organise his thoughts to form a reply. “Oh- they’re enchanted. Of a sort,” he answered. At Enjolras’ raised, golden sculpted eyebrow, he shrugged for lack of a better reaction. “They’re attuned to me. My magic. I am under the notion it sounded too peculiar to say that my body was enchanted.”

There had been no telling how Enjolras could have reacted to that comment, but it hit Grantaire somewhere in his stomach to see his cheeks darken. It was likely discomfort, because Grantaire was known to be suggestive at times and Enjolras probably assumed that was the nature of his comment.

(He didn’t dare hope it was anything else, but _fuck_ , did he want to)

Something passed through Enjolras’ expression, a conflict of some kind as his eyes slide over the tattoos, but it was dissolved before Grantaire could discern anything useful from it. At his sides, his hands twitched. Enjolras attempted to stuff them into his pockets but, as he was not draped in attire with such, had to let them fall deft at his sides once again.

“Would you desire to go inside?” Enjolras asked. He proceeded to frown, and Grantaire was not sure if it was because of the offer or word choice. _There are a great many things I desire_ , he did not say. _You, at the heart of them all_ , he also did not say.

Instead, he smiled lazily, because it was too late to fool their friends but imperative to keep Enjolras in the dark (figuratively, not only because they were in a parking lot at night) about his feelings and what hid behind the cell bars of his heart. “No,” he said. Enjolras’ brows furrowed before he can even get the next words out, but Grantaire broadened his mischievous visage. “I had the rest of the evening planned in entirety- you and me, us, standing in a vacant parking look, staring at each other until the dawn or someone declares us the newest cryptids. You would not risk my disappointment, would you?”

He pouted, for good measure. He should have considered the consequences, because Enjolras smiled softly at him and Grantaire had half a mind to melt to the ground at his feet and lie there, stargazing, and comparing how dull the stars now seemed to Enjolras’ smile.

“What breed of cryptids would we make to stare at each other in a parking lot ‘til dawn?”

“You murder my fun, Apollo. You’re a fun murderer.”

It didn’t escape his notice that Enjolras winced when he said _Apollo_ , and it didn’t take a genius to guess why. Their friends had mentioned he was unhappy by the fight but there was no heat in his voice now. He said it as one would admire the sun, cradling it and attempting to preserve its warmth by sacrificing one’s own.

But Enjolras said nothing about it. Instead, his mouth grew taut, but the smile did not vanish. It begged the question: why would he attempt joy that had been taken away just for Grantaire? “I apologise then.” And then he dipped his chin and turned away from Grantaire. “Fun murderers must be agonisingly monochrome.”

Grantaire’s most natural state amongst friends was teasing and sarcasm, and many of them would respond in kind. That time, however, it took him several seconds to acknowledge the sly undertone in Enjolras’ voice and several more to remember to follow after Enjolras as he neared the door he had emerged from. He almost tripped, dumbfounded, before he leapt forward to make up for the several inches Enjolras had over him (length wise- he was never going to make up the height difference).

He asked about the space after bounding forward to hold the door open for Enjolras and grinning childishly at Enjolras when he had already been reaching for the door. Enjolras made him stew for a moment, before explaining it was not his place but his history professor’s. Professor Lamarque had, evidently, inherited it from her grandfather, but had little use for it beyond storage.

As he led Grantaire down two short flights of stairs and into a basement hallway with forest green carpeting that looked soft to the touch and pale tawny walls, he told him that there were several different rooms down here that were currently unused. It had once been some kind of academy, Enjolras said, and several of the spaces were or had been classrooms. Lamarque rented a few out, but for the most part, the building was empty.

“She bestowed a set of keys upon me and offered it as a quiet refuge to work. Or,” Enjolras’ cheeks delightfully darkened, “simply a quiet place.”

And then he ducked his head and it was clear the gesture was one borne of self-consciousness (Enjolras spent so much of his time in crowds, he was phenomenal in them, a natural north star. But perhaps the noise overwhelmed him, at times, and wasn’t that something? Grantaire stored it away in the hidden Enjolras corner of his heart like a starving man with a stolen loaf of bread).

Because he couldn’t have Enjolras looking downtrodden as he did, Grantaire’s lip quirked and he snorted. “I imagine you’ve had more requirement, as of late, now that your two best mates are disrupting such a fragile peace.”

He wasn’t sure if it did the trick in making Enjolras feel better, however, because he suddenly groaned loud enough to cause Grantaire to jump. “Don’t remind me.” He rubbed a hand over his face (he had such long, graceful fingers. Grantaire wanted to paint his hands, wanted to wrap his own around them. Wanted to press kisses to his knuckles) and then reached up to give Grantaire a light shove at his bemused expression. “It isn’t funny! There are times they forget I share that flat. Even when I am in a common space! And its as if they’ve forgotten how to breathe if one is not touching the other.”

“You besmirch the good name of young love. They share humanity’s most beautiful blessing and flaw. You would slander the blossom by speaking ill of it?” Only from years of practise did Grantaire manage not to snicker. “What vendetta do you hold against love, Enj?”

Enjolras stopped in front of a pale, wooden door. There was a peeling sticker on the door that likely once held a sign but was far too faded to distinguish more than the letters _ce_.

“I have no vendetta against love,” he said begrudgingly, “I just wish they would share their blessings and flaws more quietly.” His eyebrows furrowed and he ran a hand through his curls, upsetting them and making it nigh impossible for Grantaire to resist the urge to reach forward and right them. “Grantaire, our walls are not even _thin_. What must they be doing, if you cannot hear music at full volume from my room but the most ungodly noises fill ever corner of that flat when they’re… blossoming.”

Despite his best efforts, Grantaire could not contain his laughter as it bubbled over and made his cheeks crinkle through his mirth. On the other hand, Enjolras was making a considerable effort to scowl at Grantaire’s amusement at his expense until his expression was softening, lips twitching upwards-

“Take your revenge on them then,” Grantaire blurted out. His voice was a little breathy, but he feared if he did not say something, he would destroy the unspoken barrier that prevented him from touching Enjolras. If he did nothing, he would fill the space between them and fulfil his heart’s need to understand the feel of Enjolras’ curls between his fingers, of him pressed against Grantaire, of-

Enjolras watched him with dark eyes – the lighting was terrible down here, Grantaire realised, cloaking them in shadows, or perhaps Enjolras had neglected to turn on any lights. Combeferre said he was a master of forgetting about lights – and then jolted, as if Grantaire had shocked him. Then he swallowed, let out a breath (did he whine? Was Grantaire projecting? What the fuck?) and opened the door they’d come to a stop in front of.

“And-” Enjolras had turned away from Grantaire now to walk into the room he’d opened, but from the side of his profile, Grantaire could see him run over his lips with his tongue and had to avert his gaze. “And who are you suggesting I enact that with?”

He turned, now several feet away from Grantaire, standing in the middle of the room. Grantaire forgot about the lights as he watched Enjolras, standing in the centre of the empty, cool room. He looked small there, chin tucked slightly inward as he watched Grantaire, eyes glittering like onyx.

And then it hit him, and the air left his lungs. “Oh- oh that’s-!” He laughed, it was forced and pained but _holy shit_. “Fuck, I didn’t intend you to return their favour, I meant- in- in a generalised sense of that. Not to- that is to say-” Grantaire waved his hands perhaps a little too frantically and could not summon the words to finish his sentence.

For the third time – the _third_ time – that night, Enjolras’ cheeks grew dark and he cast aside his gaze and shrugged, as if trying to downplay his obvious embarrassment.

Watching Enjolras blush over the suggestion of sex, talking with _Grantaire_ , at almost ten o’clock on a Monday night, in some basement-

His train of thought was interrupted when he glanced around the room and it was suitable in distracting him – amazingly – from the discussion at hand. The floors were pale, glossy wood, while the walls where a soft pink in colour, and lights littering the darkened ceiling like constellations, as though someone had tried to make the room an interpretation of a midnight sky. And on Grantaire’s left, a wall entirely filled with mirrors, and he can see the back of Enjolras’ bowed head through it and…

Enjolras called his name. Or maybe he didn’t, but Grantaire couldn’t honestly have said for sure. His footing was uneven, like a god had grabbed the world in their palms and tilted it on an axis. His chest burned, ribs creaking as he struggled to breathe.

And it can’t be by happenstance.

“It’s a studio,” Grantaire finally managed, vaguely, and turned back to scrutinise Enjolras in the centre of the room who had started to worry with the hems of his shirt in place of pockets. “It’s a dance studio,” Grantaire corrected. He waved his hand and the room was immediately washed with light that he only bothered to dim slightly when Enjolras winced. “This wasn’t by accident.”

“No,” Enjolras agreed. His hair gleamed under the studio lights, but his chin was tilted downwards as he peered up at Grantaire. Sort of. It was hard, even with his head dipped, for Enjolras to ever look _up_ at Grantaire. It made their situation, Grantaire’s situation, all the more ironic.

His mouth felt dry and he had to turn from Enjolras, so he missed the expression that twisted his face. Enjolras had heard him talk about dancing at Courfeyrac’s party, but maybe he hadn’t that day at the Musain because Grantaire had made it uncontested that he didn’t dance anymore. Or-

Grantaire’s heart shuddered and the wool grew taut and strangling in its cage. More likely than not, it was a charity case. Enjolras occasionally went out of his way for Les Amis when they needed something, anything, or even if they didn’t. That tore at Grantaire’s heart worse than anything, nearly _anything_ else Enjolras could have done (Even, perhaps, a rejection. At least Grantaire was aware of it, prepared for the inevitably. This? This was cruel).

“It- the way I’ve behaved as of late, towards you,” Enjolras ran a hand through his curls and disrupted the part of his hair. “No, not even as of late, as of _always_ \- Grantaire, I must apologise. I have been undue and unkind towards you and- and I had believed you and I, us, had reached a balance for several months and I upset that two weeks ago. I’m _sorry_.”

As if unsure what to do with himself, Enjolras lowered himself onto the pale wood flooring and settled his hands in his lap. His expression was troubled, but no longer was he trying to avert his gaze. In some ways, Enjolras’ full attention made everything worse.

But Grantaire could not stop himself from blinking, perhaps a bit dumbly, at where Enjolras sat cross-legged in the floor. _And he still looked like an angel. Who ever had seen an angel sit like that?_

Deciding it best not to broach the topic of why Enjolras had brought him to a _dance_ studio, he cautiously approached the fae where he sat. He was less graceful in bringing himself to sit in front of Enjolras but felt wrong for standing above him. If either of them should stand, it should be Enjolras.

“And you summon me to your secret lair at nine thirty on a Monday to do so? You could have simply waited until tomorrow, you are aware.” The yarn around his heart tugged it to a stutter and he dimmed the lights further, growing uncomfortable with the way they felt like a spotlight on them. “Apologising to me isn’t worth going out of your way to do so.”

It was one step up from admitting that _he_ wasn’t worth it. That was a step.

(When had he grown so dismal again?)

“I wasn’t sure you would come,” Enjolras admitted through a soft exhale. He looked painfully unsure of himself and Grantaire’s ribs creaked again. He was so tired of locking away his feelings and, for a moment, forgot why he was doing it at all. “And I disagree, I’ve done hardly anything for your benefit and that’s why we’re here. I’m afraid I’ve made _you_ come out of your way to enable me apologising to you. It would have been more convenient to have come by yours but I- no, it could not have been tomorrow even so. I needed to explain, to _you_.”

He emphasised it like he was telling Grantaire a secret of reverence. It knotted in Grantaire’s stomach, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Enjolras’ and maybe that should have been distressing. Enjolras was a touch of oblivious but not stupid, he’d be able to see right through him. That was the reason Grantaire had been studious about keeping distance between them over the years, and now Enjolras is letting him into an orbit and _fuck_ , Grantaire wasn’t going to be able to pull himself away.

“Indulge me, if you would, Grantaire,” Enjolras murmured, as if growing more distressed every second Grantaire stayed quiet. “Please.” And he said it with far too much pleading, and Grantaire couldn’t decide if that tone hurt or healed. (The way Enjolras said his name- he was well and truly lost)

“I’m sure you’ve noticed I am hardly an indulgence, Apollo,” he said before he could think better of it. Because that would make it easier, would it not? His lip curled lazily, for good measure, because it was easier to make a mockery of the situation than to lose himself in its depths.

It did not help in the slightest. Enjolras frowned, and it was so close to a pout that Grantaire blinked deliberately so he did not lean forward to cover that expression with his mouth and chase it away.

“I’ve noticed many things and that would not be one of them,” he said, pointedly. His eyes flickered like candles and it was unclear whether it was the lighting or his magic or- Grantaire’s mouth parted but he did not have time for the full effect of Enjolras’ words to hit him. “Please… please don’t call me that. Not yet.”

Because Grantaire was still reeling from his first comment – and swimming from his second, what did “not yet” mean? – all he could think to respond was a lame, “ok.”

Enjolras blinked owlishly at him, as if surprised that he hadn’t fought back. And in truth, Grantaire didn’t need to, not now, because he already had Enjolras’ attention and he doubted he would be distracted by the emptiness of the room. It had more to do with how unsure he felt, of course, but he had to remind himself, not for the first time, he didn’t need to be an arsehole for a few spare moments of Enjolras’ gaze.

“Ok,” Enjolras said after a moment, and then let out a breath. His skin appeared almost as if shimmering in the studio lights, and the proximity of him and his magic prickled underneath Grantaire’s skin. “When I came over to yours, I- do you recall I mentioned I had been angry? I’m not attempting to craft excuses for myself,” he hastened to add, though he didn’t need to. God forbid Enjolras use _excuses_ for his behaviour rather than owning up to them. It wasn’t in his nature.

Grantaire did remember, if not somewhat vaguely. He wished he possessed a better recollection. He did not say as much, having no desire to break Enjolras’ concentration as he worried at his cheek.

“My parents-” he winced like saying the word burned him like cold iron, “my parents had made contact with me that day. Well, more or less. They sent a letter, but it doesn’t matter.” Enjolras wrapped his arms around his torso as if to comfort himself, and Grantaire’s heart keened.

He forgot to stop himself when he reached out to touch Enjolras’ foot with his own. Enjolras paused, but then the air shimmered around him with an iridescent haze and Grantaire’s stomach flipped.

There wasn’t enough time to allow him to overthink it, because Enjolras was continuing on (were his shoulders more relaxed?). “They… _requested_ my return to the Court.” He glanced away, lips pursed. “They attempted to entice my reconsideration with money, with luxury, with suitors.” That time, his lip twisted around the words as they fell out, and his nails dug into his bare arms with a vengeance. The shimmer around him had grown darker as he spoke.

“Sounds dreadful,” Grantaire offered finally, attempting his best light-hearted smile because he knew, in Enjolras’ opinion, it truly was. As Enjolras turned a critical gaze on him, Grantaire did quite the opposite of what he should have and leaned forward to pry Enjolras’ fingers from his arms before he damaged them. Enjolras’ glare turned into surprise and he watched Grantaire with parted lips that Grantaire was far too close not to notice. He had to drop Enjolras’ hands back to his lap and draw away quickly, before he got any more foolish ideas.

Enjolras considered him for several minutes. Then, as if deciding Grantaire’s words were not mocking (they weren’t), he let out a heavy sigh. His aura grew faint again, and Grantaire could feel the magic retreating, no longer digging at his skin like needles but becoming closer to the sensation of a fine mist.

“The fae bargain their own people’s lives like chess pieces,” he murmured. It was clear he was frustrated but his tone was softer again, not quite defeated but certainly not inspired. “I still have not puzzled together whether their cruelty or human’s prejudices are worse.”

“They’re different,” Grantaire said before he could stop himself. At Enjolras’ raised eyebrows, he cleared his throat. “Humans have are preconstructed with empathy, and even the coldest of them have or once had shreds of it. Fae are preconstructed to know power, they are not designed to know empathy and may only understand and come under its thrall if they learn it.” His cheeks grew hot under Enjolras’ inquisitive, pleasantly surprised expression. “That does not negate what I said about the privilege humans don’t realise they have and their outlook on monster-blooded.”

“I did not claim it had to,” Enjolras said. Grantaire squinted at him, and Enjolras returned the suspicion with a smile. “I was not of the impression you had much knowledge of the fae. You speak almost as if from experience-” his smile grew pained. “You have. I should have been more aware- I used to upset Courfeyrac terribly when we left Court. I was frustrated, he could adapt so well to this world, and I understood _nothing_ , and it always rebounded on him. He and Ferre have always reprimanded me for my behaviour.”

It felt as though Enjolras had just spoken something Grantaire was not supposed to know. He spoke freely, of course, Enjolras would never speak otherwise, but he had also hadn’t known there had ever been difficulty between the three. It was foolish to think, he supposed, as all relationships were wont to have rough terrain, but never had he considered them to be anything less than absolutely melded together. More literally, in Courfeyrac and Combeferre’s instance.

“Sure,” he said, after the moment’s contemplation. “You were more traditionally fae when I first met you. You were colder, then, but the years have tempered you gently.” He smiled wryly. “But you flatter yourself- it was not you I spoke of having experience with.”

Enjolras stared at him again and Grantaire stifled the tickling laughter crawling out from his throat. (He did not realise how relaxed he had grown, nor how loose the string around his heart had become. He was caught in the moment, in so similar a way as he was when they fought. But this was soothing, as walking through light, cool rain on too hot a day was)

“I have walked the Courts before myself, you know.” Perhaps Grantaire should have long ago considered telling Enjolras things that would surprise him for his notice rather than provoking him. The look on his face was beyond comparison. But something in him recoiled and he forced himself not to so visibly shy away. “There will be another day, I think, for that story.”

“Of course,” Enjolras said, though shifted as though curiosity was unseating him. “We have lost our direction. I brought you here for discussion, but I admit I had other ambitions beyond simply apologising. I wish to pay what is due for my transgressions against you in our past and I… had hoped this would be a start.”

The suggestion was not lost on Grantaire. He stiffened, aware now of the situation, of his surroundings, of _Enjolras_. He had grown too comfortable, far too comfortable, and it was coming back now to suffocate him, to make sure he knew where he was on their scale of balance and-

“Why?” he demanded, instead of _No_. Last time he had said _no_ to Enjolras, it had built into too consequential an argument and, if he was honest, Grantaire was exhausted of fighting with Enjolras. (It was the undue kindness Enjolras had resorted to. It seemed more cruel than Enjolras’ “past transgressions”, because Grantaire knew it would only last as long as Enjolras’ patience did. He knew it and yet, a part of him yearned to ignore it, or perhaps to disavow it, because he wanted _more_. More of it, more of him, more of _them_ )

“I want to help,” Enjolras said, as if it could ever be that simple. Grantaire wasn’t aware of what he was doing until he was rolling his eyes but for once, it did not seem to upset Enjolras. In fact, he scooted closer until his knees were touching Grantaire’s and- and- _fuck_ , what was it to have thoughts again? “You claimed it to be a thing of the past, at Courf’s party, but you had been staring at the antique dancer statuette on his bookshelf before that, and you eyed it in shifts the rest of the night.”

It felt as though Enjolras had just cracked one of his ribs and it hurt and Grantaire was nearly disillusioned that he was bleeding but at the same time, it was akin to that of picking away an irritant scab from freshly healed skin. “I wasn’t aware you had been observing me so closely,” he mumbled, for his mind was too hazy to consider the rest of Enjolras’ words.

“I- that was not the point,” Enjolras said, nose twitching. And- okay, that was too fucking cute. “Dancing is in your past, but perhaps… perhaps it shouldn’t be? Am I overstepping, wrong, to assume that you miss it?”

Grantaire froze. The acidic burning in his throat was back and for a moment, he can feel a phantom pain spreading through his shoulder and back and he can hear a hissing and- and-

 _Why_ , _how_ had Enjolras known? Even Éponine was in the dark, and she _knew_ him and what had happened and seen him dance and- (and she had seen him drowned in the too-big hospital beds. He had heard her crying through even his most delirious laced moments.

“Three days,” she had shouted, while he could do no more than stare at sterile white sheets that had made him sick to look at. “I thought you were fucking _dead_ , you fucking- you- do you _realise_ how bad it was?!”

 _Of course_ , he hadn’t snarled, _you weren’t there, I was, of course I realise_. He had said nothing, and it had nearly destroyed them. They were both angry, too angry, and that had nearly broken seven years of friendship)

He only realised he had gotten to his feet when he stumbled and grew dizzy. His legs felt like cracking stone beneath him and threatened to crumble as he tried to regain his balance so as not to fall over. He only realised Enjolras had leapt up with him when he grabbed Grantaire’s upper arms to steady him and the warmth of his touch settled into his skin and he was so _fucking_ close.

“Its late,” he said mechanically. Then he turned and made to stagger away but Enjolras’ left hand slid down his wrist and Grantaire froze under his slender fingers, wrapping deftly around Grantaire’s wrist and-

His heart was beating too hard and too fast in his chest and he feared it was shatter everything around it. It _hurt_ , why did it always _hurt_ with Enjolras? (God, he wished it wouldn’t. Above all else, perhaps, he wished Enjolras didn’t hurt. It was his own fucking fault for falling in love when he knew it would only ever amount to a tragedy. He knew it wasn’t Enjolras that hurt, it was him that created that pain, but-)

Enjolras flipped his hand over and reached into a breast pocket on his shirt. With the hand he wasn’t trapping Grantaire with, he pressed something icy and small into Grantaire’s palm, staring at him with pleading eyes and Grantaire was petrified. Enjolras should not legally be allowed to look at him like that because- oh, _oh_ , Grantaire would do _anything_ for those eyes.

(His luck was normally shit but he realised if Enjolras had looked at him like that when he had walked Grantaire back to his flat and asked him to come to the rally- damn him, Grantaire wouldn’t have hesitated)

“This was never an attempt to pressure you. If you do not wish it then- then I am truly sorry for pressing. All I ask is for you to consider and if you find it to your disliking then…” They both stare down at the key Enjolras had pressed to Grantaire’s palm as though it was for the Gates of Heaven. “Then I grant you a quiet place too. Not that your house is riddled with ghastly noises of your best mates but- but I- that is to say, when we can behave ourselves,” he smiled, privately, and his eyes glistened like melted sapphires, “you are insightful, R. I enjoy your assertions. I haven’t been vocal enough about that.”

With Enjolras smiling and his tone soft and breathy as he admitted to ‘enjoying’ Grantaire’s ‘assertions’ and still holding Grantaire’s wrist, he could feel his composure unravelling faster than a sweater being pulled asunder. He had to leave, he _had_ to, or-

“I’m sorry,” he said, and pulled away from the grip that was making him come undone. That was so warm, that Grantaire wanted never to leave, that he wanted to grant more of himself to. He was already too far away from Enjolras to touch, nearly to the door, backing up in what must have looked like a drunken faltering. But he couldn’t look away from Enjolras’ gaze. He didn’t have that strength. “I meant to say that, when I left. I was sorry, I am sorry. I can’t, I-”

He found the strength in the compressing of his ribs, turned away from Enjolras, and left him all alone in the empty studio.

By the time he was starting his car, he was trembling. If Enjolras had been able to see through him, had been able to understand the gaping, bloodied hole in his chest where choreographing routines and weaving magic into his steps should have gone then- then what else had he seen?

(Even if he wanted- no. But if he _did_ , the two things he most sought after, so close together? He wasn’t sure he could handle that)

 

* * *

 

Tuesday, Grantaire brought his sketchbook to the meeting to lose himself in the pencil and paper for a while. True to his assumptions, they all spend much of the afternoon talking about the rally and its success from the previous day.

Despite the daze (read: panic) Grantaire had spent the rest of the night in after meeting with Enjolras, and the vehemence he’d put out to separate himself from the “social justicing”, as he liked to refer to it as, the positivity in the air was sweet and contagious. The sun poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and a pair of rainbows reflected off the surface somewhere beyond the triumvirate’s table. One caught and shimmered in Enjolras’ curls while he was imparting his experience with a local government representative who he believed could be persuaded to their cause.

It was one of the times Grantaire wished his magic was able to pull out his memories like pencil marks and set them on paper. He was in the middle of the sketch he’d been planning the night Enjolras had showed up at the tattoo parlour. He was delicately keeping it from anyone else’s view, until Jehan raised an eyebrow at him and then smiled privately.

His chest was lighter today as he listened to everyone chattering about their success and their hopes for where the venue might be leading them. He couldn’t believe reverently like his friends did but-

But he met Enjolras’ eyes several times. Sometimes he was pacing mid-speech, using his hands to bring power to his words and like that, he looked like a heaven-send, gifting his wisdom to the mortals that would listen. (It didn’t hurt to watch him. Like this, Grantaire could pretend he wasn’t running on an hour of sleep and caffeine. He could pretend the world was going to change.

He didn’t have to pretend he believed Enjolras would accomplish that. He never doubted, maybe foolishly, that Enjolras would tear down the world and build it anew, cut the heads of the snakes who ate power and misery like brunch with crystal glasses and champagne. Enjolras would never stop, he knew, until equality wasn’t only granted in death)

The sun was brilliant and the afternoon warm and welcoming and it was decided, after the meeting, they would all walk together to the nearest park to take full advantage of the company and compassion of the endless sky.

Éponine only dispersed briefly to bring Gavroche out. Courfeyrac cheered at the suggestion and when they arrived, caught the boy as he barrelled towards the satyr. Éponine was only too joyous when Courfeyrac liberated her younger sibling (“Hellion,” she called him with the kind of affection that could warm a cold heart) and began a chase that left them both shouting.

It was of some surprise to Grantaire, then, as he was observing their capers from a bench under the full gaze of the sun, that Combeferre approached and sat beside him. His skin was a shade paler than normal and glistened as if wet, and Grantaire knew that Joly and Jehan must have finally discovered a formula that kept him safe under the sun after so much trial and error.

His smile, on the other end of the spectrum, was so full of warmth Grantaire could almost feel it radiating from him, which was as ironic as you could get from a vampire. His dark eyes trailed after Courfeyrac and Gavroche for several moments as he sat, in silence, before he let out a sigh that spoke more of his affection than any words.

“He would make a jewel of a father,” Combeferre said quietly, and finally turned to Grantaire, smile never faltering even though Grantaire was not entirely sure what he had done to merit it.

Grantaire, never one to let opportunities slip away from him, rolled his eyes as he tried his damndest not to grin. “The pair of you are _gross_ and I can feel my teeth wither away in my mouth from the saccharinity about you two.”

Combeferre’s expression sobered and for a moment, Grantaire was sure he had taken it too far. He wasn’t close with Combeferre and he _had_ interrupted a moment between the two of them only a few days ago. And then Combeferre glanced away, towards Courfeyrac and- and his lips were _twitching_.

“I certainly should hope it is in your mouth that you feel your teeth,” he said, as if discussing the weather, and Grantaire took a moment to stare at him before bursting into a fit of uninvited giggles because _oh_ , that was a terrible joke. But then Combeferre was chuckling and honestly, how was this real? How was this his life?

( _If you joke like that,_ he did not say through his laughter, _and Courfeyrac acts like that, you will both make crowns of fatherhood_ )

“Well,” Grantaire said, once he was done getting over the new side of Combeferre he was unused to being the recipient of, “I should hope that both of you do, what after raising Enjolras.”

Combeferre had the most photogenic smile Grantaire had ever seen, he realised. Enjolras was the best muse but Combeferre’s smile could make any photographer weep. And Grantaire was struck once again, that he was on the receiving end. When had this happened? When had Combeferre and Enjolras decided to permit him their time of day (or night)?

“I am not sure I have a compelling argument against that, much as Enj would loathe it. I have been awoken at ungodly hours of the night to attend to him _and_ he is a terribly selective eater.” Combeferre took what Grantaire assumed was a contemplative moment. “I never thought I would speak it, R, but you have made me uncomfortably aware of the similarities between my best mate and a toddler.”

Grantaire did the courteous thing in such a situation and snorted, glancing back towards Courfeyrac in time to see him scoop Gavroche up onto his shoulders. A feat, considering how short Courf was and just how tall Gavroche was becoming. Also, it took considerable effort to avoid piercing Gavroche on his horns. Courfeyrac, miraculously, seemed to be an expert on awareness of where they were at all times. (Grantaire never had been, but his curved upwards so there weren’t many instances it had become a problem for him, save for when he had danced)

There was another silence but when Grantaire glanced back at Combeferre, he found himself under a gentle sort of scrutiny. Combeferre gazed at him both as though trying to piece a puzzle to completion and as if attending to a malnourished puppy. Grantaire squirmed under his gaze as subtly as possible, glanced back at Courfeyrac and-

Oh.

He was distantly aware of how rigid he had become and could feel the tension pulsing in the air between them. Combeferre and Courfeyrac had never been the sort to keep secrets from the other, he knew, the only one ever being their affections (and even that couldn’t be kept quiet forever, of course).

“Courf told you,” Grantaire said. It wasn’t a question, and he avoided Combeferre’s gaze in favour of staring at his hands at if they held an escape from the present conversation. “I know what you must fancy of me, but pray, it’s not-”

“Grantaire.” Combeferre’s voice cut through him and rattled him as if his insides were the pebbles of a rainstick, and he unthinkingly met Combeferre’s confused, wrinkled brow. “I’m afraid I’ve not an inkling of what you speak of.”

“I did not- oh.” He frowned, mirroring Combeferre’s expression. “But- surely-” As if to spark his memory, he ran a hand through his curls. His fingers bumped against the jagged buds and- _but_ Combeferre wasn’t following the gesture. “Oh,” said Grantaire again, dropping his hand onto the bench in between them. His cheeks warmed. “I- forget I said anything.”

Combeferre peered at him a moment longer, tilting his chin as if to observe Grantaire over the top of his glasses. At such an angle, Grantaire could see the curtain of thick eyelashes lining Combeferre’s midnight eyes.

“Do not stress yourself,” Combeferre finally said, leaning back against the bench to watch his boyfriend. “Courfeyrac says what he thinks without filter, but he would take personal affairs of those he cares about to the grave. He will never tell of something without your consent if he thought it was meant to be kept quiet.”

Courfeyrac buckled under the weight of Gavroche and it sent them both crumpling to the ground in fits of laughter. Courfeyrac was wearing an annoyingly hot pink shirt covered in multicoloured hearts and jeans and it was almost unfair how well he could wear things like that. Gavroche, in a tattered and faded green shirt, should have looked dull next to him. But he was smiling like he absorbed some of the sun and it made him glow.

(Gavroche didn’t smile a lot. Grantaire couldn’t hold it against him, not knowing from experience what kind of parents the Thénardiers were. But he was happier, once Éponine had won custody and their parents began serving their time)

“Ah,” Grantaire said, unsure of how else to respond to Combeferre. He had assumed, of course, and once again he had been wrong. What kind of friend to these people was he, who he had known for nearly three years and had taken him in as one of their own?

(A miserable one. It was his shortcoming, for wasting a year and a half dragging his heels against the idea of therapy with more excuses than one could fill a book with. The year and a half he’d tried to self-medicate with the cheapest kinds of alcohol and he and Éponine had barely spoken. It was only after she had come over to find him so ill, she had to bring him once _again_ to the hospital, an experience Grantaire would have rather swallowed his own tongue than gone through again, and then five months later she was dragging him along to the newly formed Les Amis de l’ABC. It had all been poor timing, really)

And if the stylised jacket Courfeyrac had been talking about dreamily for months showed up, anonymously addressed to him, at his flat the next day? Well. That was Courfeyrac’s business and whoever had stayed up all night wrestling to find it and obtain it.

 

* * *

 

The first time he dragged himself to Lamarque’s was about week and a half after Enjolras had asked him to come to the secret lair (as Grantaire had hailed it).

 _I’m not going to dance, he said if I needed a quiet place_. He told himself that, on repeat like a broken record, as he drove over to Lamarque’s half past midnight on Wednesday. Well, technically Thursday.

The streetlamps made the night look foreign and different, amber highlighting the roads and the pavement, and it was why Grantaire had once loved walks in the dead of night when no one else was supposed to be around. It felt like he’d stepped into another world, one that was quiet and kind.

(It wasn’t always quiet and kind, the aches on both sides of his skull told him. That was why he’d stopped walking alone so late. He missed it, and he wasn’t afraid to admit that to himself like certain other things)

The 24/7 diner was, of course, obnoxiously bright. There was only one other car in the parking lot when he pulled up, and Grantaire breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t recognise it. Enjolras had no business being out after midnight.

If he just cleaned up after himself and made sure everything was as he left it, nobody would ever know he had been there.

The basement was pleasantly cool when Grantaire made his way to the door Enjolras had led him too (he had definitely not opened the wrong door twice), and the studio left as he had last seen it. He didn’t bother flicking the lights on as he reached out with his magic to get used to their gentle electrical currents. It took some coaxing, but they finally turned on and bathed the room in a soft amber.

He knew if Éponine were here, she would complain about how poorly lit he cast his surroundings. She knew he could alter the lights with his magic, which left much to be desired when he tried to use the faulty lightbulb excuse.

But he couldn’t stand the brightness anymore, not when it left the prickling sensation of imagined heat from stage lights. Enjolras was already too radiant for him to orbit around for too long a time.

It hadn’t been a lie, he concluded as he set his bag – with his sketchbook, of course – to the side, and settled down on the floor. He turned his back to the mirror, when he knew he should have monitored his posture but- what had his last therapist said the final time he’d ordained to go? _Baby steps_.

Baby steps, he scoffed as he spread out his legs in front of him. Like it hadn’t been four fucking years already and he should have gotten over himself.

(He could hear one of his therapists chastising him for it. “Trauma isn’t the common cold. One doesn’t simply get over it,” she’d said. As if he’d just returned from a war)

When he’d told himself he wasn’t going to dance on his way over, he hadn’t been dishonest with himself. He was too tense, too unused to the motions that had once been like clockwork to him. His centre of balance would be shit and his posture would be as picturesque as a newborn foal.

He leaned forward over his legs and pain already injected itself direct to his muscles as he stretched. If he was being honest, he wasn’t sure he would be able to convince himself to ever dance again, wasn’t sure he’d ever be as malleable as he had been once (“Like water with bones,” Éponine had called him, a month after he’d first met her and she’d brought him back to her parents like a stray puppy. “How the fuck do you even bend that way?”

“Clearly _you’ve_ never met one of the fae,” Grantaire had laughed, joints cracking as he’d spread himself over the floor).

The stretching was good anyway. And if he were more flexible, he could duck away from Bahorel’s swings like nothing, and wouldn’t that be worth the look on his face? (Grantaire packed a mean punch, but that didn’t ignore the fact he was still much smaller than Bahorel and his best strategy was speed)

Besides, the continuous breaks in his routine with Bahorel had shaken him more than he’d liked to admit. Grantaire loathed to be “one of those people” who had everything scheduled and planned out and would panic if anything changed. And it wasn’t like he ever had, and then the last several years, it was as trying to put handlebars on everything just to be in control of it all.

At this point, all he could request was he didn’t turn out to be some damn closet control freak. If he was- what had he come to then? There were many lows in his book, and he was not willing to stoop there.

It was when he had spread his legs to the sides and leaned forward to press against the cool, glossy flooring, feeling at least a little drowsy now which was a significant improvement to feeling like he was buzzed on caffeine, that the door opened with a soft scrape. Grantaire sat up so fast his hip creaked, and he winced at the pain that flared from it.

He looked, wide-eyed with a heart pounding so fast against his chest it felt like a mallet hitting a gong too hard, and-

 _Oh_. If he’d thought he was fucked before…

Enjolras’ nose was scrunched, and his brow furrowed as he peered around the door, but the expression smoothed as he glanced up at the lights and then across the studio at Grantaire. His hair was darkened under the honeyed lighting, but it looked like fucking polished bronze and the only way to tell that it wasn’t was how unkempt and frizzy it was. His skin glowed and what had been a faint red shimmer around him turned to the colour of melted roses.

And then he smiled, something tired but something endearing, and Grantaire forgot he needed to breathe.

“I did not believe you would return,” Enjolras said, his voice low and just slightly raspy. He sounded tired and shit, it must have been one in the morning by now. What was he doing awake?

“You? Not believing? I’ll have to keep an eye on my undue influence over you,” Grantaire replied. It didn’t come out mocking, or even teasing like he’d meant. It sounded grossly and terrifyingly affectionate, and his heart squeezed in his chest.

But Enjolras laughed, quiet and sweet and Grantaire wondered if he’d gotten into some kind of car accident on the way over. All the same, he wished there was a pause on life. He could drown on the feeling trickling through his veins, his heart pumping out adoration like blood, and the sound of Enjolras’ light and warmth spreading through the room.

“Not undue, but I shall hold you to that.” Enjolras had let the door drift open farther and he crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the doorway. It wasn’t an angry setting of his shoulders when he was losing traction in an argument but a domestic sort of place to occupy his hands (which he didn’t put in the pockets of the baby pink hoodie he was wearing, which was Enjolras’ usual placeholder for his hands, which maybe Grantaire read into more than was strictly necessary). “I apologise, as well. It was not my intention to disturb you. Only I’ve come to be acquainted with your magic.” His smile became tinged with pain. “I am a fool for neglecting to notice it before. I had mistaken it for someone else’s. I should have realised.”

“I’m not sure a scenario exists where you could be a disturbance,” Grantaire said, and maybe it was a little bit forward of him, but he felt validated after Enjolras said he’d come to be familiar with the specific sensation of Grantaire’s magic. “And it is not such a heavy misjudgement on your part. It wasn’t as though we had been alone, and my magic is not so powerful that it could be distinguished from, say, Feuilly’s, Combeferre’s, or Jehan’s. It is not so powerful at all, really.”

And then the frown returned to Enjolras’ face. His brows curling was not in anger but in befuddlement. “You have a shallow depth of perception if you are under such an impression. It was a weighty lapse in my judgement. You radiate extensive power- surely you are being modest? Your magic is-” he paused to blink, as if something had dawned upon him. “Warm. Familiar.” And then he ducked his head, as if unintending to say _familiar_ , and his gleaming curls fell into a curtain around his face.

Grantaire had to gather himself for several moments after Enjolras had spoken. He had never heard someone describe the way his magic had felt to them, and he knew it was subjective to the person but- but how in the hell was he _warm_ to Enjolras? Familiar was surprising to hear, because he made it sound like Feuilly’s and Combeferre’s was not.

(He realised some time later that Enjolras could have been raised alongside Combeferre and his magic would still not feel ‘familiar’, because they were from different corners of existence. Feuilly’s would only ever be a human magic. Not even Courfeyrac’s- satyrs and the fae might cross paths on occasion now but they hadn’t historically.

Grantaire was likely the only one who had any relation to Enjolras’ own magic. Pucks had never been a well-known race, existing mostly in the shadow of the fae and often confused with them despite the glaring differences. But there’d always been a kinship, of a bastardised sort, between the two races, and they’d come from the same history)

“I have a wonder,” Grantaire said, instead of replying to Enjolras because that was the sort of route that he would wander down the wrong path on. He’d always been dreadful at staying on the path. “Only, what reason do you have for kicking around underground as you are at one in the morning?”

If Enjolras noticed the change of topic, he didn’t show it. Or rather, grew distracted. His mouth parted into a perfect _o_ and he raised those two sculpted eyebrows and Grantaire wanted to trace the motion with his hand, with a paintbrush.

“I- is it really?” Before Grantaire could even conceive the notion to reply, Enjolras was producing his phone from his pocket and squinting down at the screen. If anyone could squint in such a way that made them akin to a descendant of heaven, it was Enjolras. And then, to top all of it off, colour rose in his cheeks and a pale green weaved into the shimmer around it. “It would seem I… lost track of the time.”

“Wonder of all wonders,” Grantaire said with a lilt and perhaps too curved a mouth, as Enjolras hastened to scowl at him.

It was no secret Enjolras lost himself to the clutches of work more often than not, diving in with such a single-minded destination that there was little time to ponder his surroundings. Or the gradual, crushing pass of time. He’d once been kicked from the Musain, after he’d stayed well past closing.

And Enjolras knew that there was little he could say to defend himself. He opened his mouth, to rebut Grantaire no doubt, and for a moment, time was suspended. Then, his brow deepened, eyes growing narrow as if to cut into Grantaire. “I know of me, then, but what of you?”

Therein lie the riddle of the small hours. Why, indeed? Grantaire glanced down at his hands, and they were suddenly too empty, sitting too idle. He folded them in his lap and twisted them together. Or perhaps that was more the truth, that it was too twisted, tangled together, for him to understand.

“In truth, I-” But Grantaire did not know what came next. He glanced to the empty wall where he could see Enjolras hover in his peripheral vision but did not have to meet his destructively sleepy and tranquil gaze. “There is too much noise, often. Maybe it is for sanctuary, or for escape. If I disentangle it, Ange, I’ll take an oath,” he smiled again, and risked the full weight of Enjolras’ eyes, “that you shall be second to myself to know the mystery.”

Enjolras’ features softened and Grantaire felt as though he could melt into the floor. He had been so very wrong to have ever taken Enjolras at a face value, for all the severity of his allure, it held nothing on the tender elegance he displayed now.

He did not ask what caused such disturbance, when Grantaire had magic and could ward his walls to be soundproof (why hadn’t he thought to suggest that when Enjolras had protested ungodly noises, instead of making insinuations?). Grantaire did not have to explain that he could not soundproof his own mind or spell away his past, much as he should wish to. There was no dissatisfaction in Enjolras’ gaze, or his aura, or the softness of his expression.

(For a moment, Grantaire could almost pretend that he understood. Enjolras, his angel, understanding something he had warred with for so long. But- _no_ , but _no_. Rather, there was nothing Grantaire would have despised more, he realised. Nobody, least of all Enjolras, should know what it was to understand. Grantaire did not believe in humanity but he believed in Enjolras, and Enjolras believed in humanity. If Enjolras’ faith wavered, Grantaire was sure he would break)

And then something terrible and unlucky and absolutely phenomenal occurred. Enjolras raised a single, now challenging eyebrow, and his lips curled into a horribly smug expression that Grantaire was not even aware existed on Enjolras (and shouldn’t, by rights. Legally, it shouldn’t. Fuck, what was that smile for?).

“Ange?” asked Enjolras, with a tone the left too much to the imagination.

And- ah shit, Grantaire’s face and neck and hands and ears all grew hot and to his absolute horror, the lights (the dirty fucking traitors) shifted into a delicate balance of maiden pink and penny-gold.

His only comfort was that Enjolras couldn’t possibly know what it resembled. He could not, as Grantaire could think of many reactions to the realisation of his veneration, and the soft chimes of his laughter echoing around him like the sweetest song was not it, not plausible.

(But lay him to rest- Enjolras _liked_ it. If Enjolras hadn’t said so, hadn’t ducked his chin to his chest and peer at Grantaire almost shyly, he would never have believed it. He was sure, at such turns as the night had led him down, this was all a very elaborate fever dream.

It would be the only earnest answer, he decided, as he watched Enjolras turn to wave at him after he climbed from Grantaire’s car and approached the building that held the flat he shared with Combeferre)

 

* * *

 

In retrospect, it was damned lucky that he lasted three years without incident around any of Les Amis. There had only been a few times anything out of the ordinary had happened – he’d shattered lights before (really, how had Enjolras not known he was a sorcerer until three years after they had met? _It’s not as though I advertise it_ but hell, he hadn’t hidden it either), he’d been the worst kind of an arse towards Feuilly, Marius, and Joly when they’d first met _because they were human_ (and if that wasn’t inequality or unjust, then what the hell was?).

And finally, he’d once had a dissociative episode because he’d been stupid enough to trail after Enjolras to a peaceful protest (he’d been sitting in the front row, but then all he could see were the crowds and the sun was too hot and his vision was growing hazy at the edges and _fuck_ , they were outside but it felt like walls were shutting them in, trapping them, and nobody could get out and Grantaire was trapped and he could hear everyone screaming-

Nothing had happened, at the protest. Jehan, bless them, had dragged him back to their flat and lavished him with the best tasting tea Grantaire had ever had and it had calmed him. Jehan had never pressed him, never asked for a reason, and Enjolras might be an avenging angel but Jehan was purely and simply an _angel_ ).

But wishing wells could run dry like everything else and damned if Grantaire had possessed any luck to begin with (if he had, it must have been siphoned into being a horrid friend and shoving Les Amis into the shadows, where they couldn’t see the horrors of his mind in the lights).

Even so, nothing should have happened. It was all because of the one fucking idiot who decided to smoke at a gym – because that was the pinnacle of health, and really, it couldn’t have waited _five minutes?_

It should never have surfaced. It hadn’t been the first time someone was smoking nearby, and, shit, it hadn’t even been the first time someone was smoking at the gym.

But he hadn’t had enough to drink – let it not be said Grantaire was good at taking care of himself despite the efforts he’d been putting in, for Éponine and Jehan, and maybe a few others – and he and Bahorel hadn’t been pulling their punches.

He stumbled, his vision growing fuzzy, and someone was smoking.

Bahorel grabbed his elbow to keep him from falling and laughed heartily. He said something, but it was as trying to listen to a song underwater. Bahorel’s hand was too hot – later, he might have realised it was sweat or his own body heat because they fought dirty – and suddenly the world was tipping.

The hand on his elbow had vanished, at some point, and there was a great clamouring around him. Someone, multiple people, were shouting and- and- fuck, no, the acrid taste of the smoke filled his nostrils and mouth like water, like alcohol, like _blood_.

(“If you’d harness the patience to understand, you wouldn’t keep scorching your own hands,” a wizard had once told him sternly, when he was wrapping the marred flesh of Grantaire’s hand for the fifth time since he’d begun learning how to conjure flames. “When you learn to control it, to bridle it, it can’t hurt you.”

But control only came naturally to him when he was trying to grip a situation with both his hands to make sure it didn’t run off on him. That things didn’t move too fast, or the unexpected couldn’t wound him like a wayward knife seeking the bitter taste of blood)

If he’d been asked to put a finger on how much time had passed since the moment he’d begun spiralling and when something frantic, but calm washed over him, he wouldn’t have been able to say.

Only that, in the elapsed time, he’d somehow ended up in a shower stall, on the floor. His hands and arms were encased in panicked, black flames that made an ominous whining hum rather than the pop of a normal fire. The lights around him flickered on and off violently as if the gym’s locker room had been reconstructed to become a disco.

“I said _calm him_ you golden fucking fury, not make it worse!” a voice snapped, so abrasive it prickled underneath Grantaire’s skin.

“I’m _trying_!” replied someone else, equally as venomous but with shaking undertones. “Shouting at me will yield nothing!”

“Stop it, both of you! Ép, I beg of you, step outside with me.” The third voice was softer and gentler, and something loosened in Grantaire’s chest.

He heard a snarl while he tilted down his chin to look at his hands, his arms. His stomach twisted into tight braids and- and what if he couldn’t control them? What had happened? When-?

“Like hell I’m going to leave R with him!” countered the first voice and- and _Éponine_. It was Éponine, and she was only ever there when the scythe of the reaper had passed, which- had something happened? What had become of him this time? What had he-

“I’m attempting to _help_ ,” snarled the second voice and it was so full of righteous anger that there was no mistaking it except- _why_ was Enjolras there, with him? Near him?

The unnatural, warring sensation of a panicked relaxation turned a deep red anger. The fire on his arms began to crackle and turned a blinding blue and immediately, the sensation became soothing again.

His mind was a whirlwind, but his surroundings were becoming slowly less muddied by the smoke-dense fog around him. Thick, Spanish moss had covered the shower walls and the yellowing-cream tiles had begun to crack as florae tried to sprout between them.

Jehan’s magic was, out of everyone’s, most comforting to feel in the atmosphere and, as sensitive as he was in those thunderous moments, Grantaire could feel it rippling through the air. It was an undercurrent, however, once he became aware that the foreign sensation trying to settle the electricity in his veins was overwhelmingly Enjolras.

The sound of metal hinges squealing rung in the distance, but it echoed like church bells too nearby in Grantaire’s ears and he nearly lifted his hands to his face as if he could bury the horrible ache in his mind with shivering fingers. But his hands, his whole self, was still crackling with fire so bright and so blue it hurt to look at.

“Éponine! Gavroche is here!”

She was cursing, she was so vibrant and angry and Grantaire could feel it, but he only saw her as she stormed away. “Watch him!” she called over her shoulder, but Grantaire was unsure of who she was referring to or even addressing.

His throat was cracked and dry, his tongue sandpaper, and he drew in sluggish breaths. Only- only- what had happened? He was- he was-

“R?” came Jehan’s voice, comforting the way jasmine smelled, and Grantaire’s gaze skittered around the room to find them. “Grantaire,” they called again, until he found they were standing several paces in front of him. Their hair was in a dishevelled braid, as though nervous fingers had run through those powder-soft waves once or twenty too many times.

But his gaze was drawn, pulled from Jehan by the tug in his chest that demanded he turn- that he look to where Enjolras was crouching, closer than Jehan but out of reach. Around him shimmered the palest of lavenders. The tranquillity he was attempting to radiate was only broken by the charges of dandelion yellow, spiking through his aura like lightning.

Grantaire could feel that lightning in his veins, could feel it like needles circulating his bloodstream. His chest didn’t hurt but everything else did and, for a moment, Grantaire could have sworn he could feel scorches across his back.

And- Enjolras’ hair was mussed, thrown in such a state that Grantaire had never seen before. And he hid stress as one might hide prized possessions and so Grantaire hadn’t the grace to see him stressed before. It stuck in his gut like glue, and he was sure anything that caught in his stomach’s knotting would sooner tear itself apart then become untangled, unstuck.

If his hands had not been on fire, he reminded himself they were, he might have reached a hand out to smooth that furrow that marred his brow as one would gently smear paint that had been wrongly brushed (God, how many times would he be able to stop himself before he truly did such?).

“What-” he had to swallow and pull away his eyes from Enjolras’ beauty- it was as blinding as the fire sizzling over his skin, perhaps more so but he was so very scared and Enjolras _shouldn’t see that_. Jehan, by all rights, should not either, but they had already seen Grantaire in worse fits and-

His throat was so dry, too dry, and he had a wonder whether the fire was licking all the moisture from his body greedily, bleeding him dry to sustain itself. Fire was never satiated, Grantaire had learned, not even after sucking away a soul as one would suck on honey. Perhaps, that was the way souls tasted, or perhaps they had different flavours-

“Are you able to-” Jehan carefully reached a hand towards Grantaire to gesture. It was at the faintest flicker, like a dying candle on the last length of wick, of fear in Jehan’s eyes that it hit Grantaire all at once that he was _on fire_.

He turned to his hands all at once, as if staring at them for the first time, as if a stranger’s hands had been stitched to his body while he had been away from his own self. And he pulled it back, recalled the sting of the flames as they danced their way up his body. His clothes had not been so badly scorched but there were singes, at the edges, and it left a surreal sort of panic settling into Grantaire’s chest like a cavity.

As soon as the fire had retreated, reluctantly because it seemed at times that magic had more of its own mind than the one controlling it, Jehan approached him and crouched beside him in the shower stall. Gently, they held their hands out, looking at him appraising before taking his hands into their own.

The ivy on his left arm had withered and turned an unsettling shade of brown, shaking as though in fear and Grantaire realised that he, too, was shivering. His hands twitched in Jehan’s and his skin had tinged an unhealthy, abrasive and dark red. It was not a burn, not quite, but it was not, _not_ , a burn either.

“A drink,” rasped Grantaire, keeping his gaze on Jehan’s shoes because he could not bear to meet his friend’s gaze. They were wearing hideous cowboy boots with pink highlights but, as with all of Jehan’s terrible fashion tastes, it fit them. He felt Jehan’s grip tighten and he rocked backwards where he sat. “ _Water_ ,” he clarified, his voice as hoarse and emaciated as the ivy running up his arms.

Jehan gave his hands another gentle squeeze. “Do you feel well enough to stand?” they asked. Hope chimed like bells at the edge of their tone and Grantaire could feel it hit him in a chest like a punch.

But in honesty, Grantaire wasn’t assured enough of his own ability to answer that. Was he? His legs were as ghosts, crossed in front of him but he could not feel them. He couldn’t have predicted whether, should he try, he would stay upright or simply crumple back onto the cold, damp floor.

Instead of answering, he asked, “How long?” as if it were routine. His voice was no better, no less gravelly, but it came unbidden from his lips and-

Enjolras was still silent behind Jehan, but his eyes pierced into Grantaire like ice water after too many drinks. It sobered him so sharply it felt as a whip might against his cheek, and he couldn’t stop the wince that followed it. The haze around Enjolras had become a periwinkle dust, yellow still snapping through the air.

He was a summer storm, Grantaire riddled. He was electrifying and beautiful and a little bit terrifying but- but it cleared your mind and it was like breathing in the purest air known to the earth.

(Grantaire could evaporate into a fine mist in such a storm, which would be all right anyway. At least then, he wouldn’t have to face the gradual softening of his ribs. The warmth like Jehan’s poems about spring flowers filling his chest and melting away at the entrapment around his heart.

He had been wrong, before. He had not been in love with Enjolras- but that had changed like the passing of summer into autumn and it was a dreadful, dreadful affair. It was so much worse than he had believed love could be.

Love was not the soft touch Jehan had always described in their poems. It was the feeling of taking a fucking knife to the heart and never bleeding out.)

“Bahorel called Jehan only about an hour ago,” Enjolras spoke, finally, because Jehan was still peering at Grantaire in confusion and concern. “Éponine was the one to advise him to bring you to the shower, while you were-” Enjolras’ brow furrowed as it was inevitably wont to do.

Because neither of them knew how to behave around him in such a state, he realised. Jehan- they were afraid (fire to a dryad was as a shark was to a seal, a wolf to a weakened deer), and Enjolras-

Gone was the vulnerable tenderness Grantaire had been blessed with during the times he’d visited the studio (more than twice now, only ever stretching and listening to music or, to his surprise, talking with Enjolras. It was becoming an almost ritual occurrence. An unspoken thing between them. It was as invigorating as it was frightening), replaced with all his sharp edges and a fragile uncertainty, and it _hurt_ in a way that Enjolras hadn’t been hurting him as of late.

“Did- did I-?” his voice collapsed then, sufficiently dehydrated and exhausted. Even so, he was not sure he would have been able to voice his thoughts, because- because-

( _Forty-six, forty-six, forty-six, forty-sixfortysixfortysix-)_

Bless Jehan, though they misunderstood what he had begun to imply, gently tugged at his hands. “R,” they said, and gave him the kind of smile that would have made a landscape prosper. The kind of smile that made Grantaire want to cry, because he felt so very undeserving of that kind of light, that kind of sincerity and hope after- “Please, we’ve all been worried. The others- someone can bring you water, but I believe they’ll want to see you first. Please.”

The others- shit. Shit, the others were there, and they would see him like this and-

“Jehan,” Enjolras said, and his voice was unfairly gentle all of a sudden. His aura had grown faint. To see it, Grantaire had to squint but- how had his expression grown so subdued so fast? “Perhaps we should grant him time before pulling him into the den of wolves.”

Enjolras’ voice- by all the heavens, Grantaire would be sick. He was sure of it.

“I could collect water,” Enjolras said, when Jehan’s brow had knitted but he had nodded at Enjolras’ suggestion.

But then, all at once, Enjolras was standing to leave and abruptly, without his aura nearby, Grantaire couldn’t bear to imagine the absence of Enjolras’ magic (it was familiar in a way nobody else’s was, Enjolras had been right about that). Then, without his consent or prior consideration, Grantaire was opening his mouth in a wordless protest and trying to stand.

His legs were numb, and needles spiked through his legs and the motion was aborted as he fell forward. It was Jehan’s hand that steadied him and kept him from, likely, a bloody nose due to crushing it against the cracked tile floor.

(If Enjolras’ magic was like a crutch, Jehan’s magic was like a blanket. The buds and the Spanish moss- it was Jehan’s version of that yellow lightning. If Enjolras was the summer storm, Jehan was the cool, refreshing rain. And Grantaire wanted neither of them to leave him.)

As Enjolras eased himself back to the floor and Jehan stabilised Grantaire back to sitting, they exchanged an uncertain glance.

“I could fetch the water?” Jehan suggested, and Grantaire immediately reached out to clasp his hand around Jehan’s wrist. They pursed their lips uncertainly, and another glance was traded with Enjolras. “Then- well, we could bring you to the others?”

There was not a single fibre in Grantaire’s body that wanted to expose himself to the others in such a fit but- but if it meant keeping Enjolras and Jehan by his side-

(And goddammit, maybe it was time for explanations. They were his _friends_.

“Speaking to those you trust will do you good,” one of his therapists, the first, had said. “And I do not refer simply to the dear girl who brought you to me.” And then, features softening- “The world is not against you, Grantaire. You do not have to fight a battle every day, nor do you have to defend yourself without rest.”

It _felt_ like the world was against him. Fate was a cruel mistress. The universe, by her side, an absolute fucking bitch. And they both _despised_ Grantaire.)

He allowed Jehan to coax him into standing (and bless them, the Spanish moss was thick enough to hold on to as he pulled himself up). He swayed on his feet for a moment and his nose scrunched at the pain that spiralled through his legs. But then Enjolras was nearly glowing with that pastel lavender hue again and all the hurt was washed away like cleaning a wound under flowing water.

Just because he had agreed to it did not stop his heart from sinking to his toes when Jehan and Enjolras led him out of the room (Jehan kept hold of his arm and Grantaire leaned into them and neither noticed the little, disheartened frown on Enjolras’ face as he watched them) and found him staring at all their friends, sitting in a giant oval on the glossy wooden floor.

All heads turned towards the locker room door as it creaked open, and conversations were as pulling the brakes on a train- it was deafeningly obvious and painful to listen to, and Grantaire could not stop his grimace.

Bahorel was the first to his feet (though he narrowly beat Courfeyrac, whose hooves _cracked_ against the floor as if he’d snapped the boards in half and it was so loud it hurt to hear). He crossed the floor in no time and Jehan barely had time to let Grantaire go before Bahorel was wrapping him in a near-crushing hug.

His mind checked out, unable to process so much information so fast after it had gone through such a violent and sudden reset. Bahorel had already pulled away by the time he’d recovered, and he was speaking a mile a second, and he was so _loud_ and-

“Bahorel,” Feuilly interrupted both of them, and Bahorel finally snapped shut his lips. Courfeyrac had paused nearby too, and everyone else had stood. Feuilly waited nearby and eyed Grantaire with the same kind of concern as Jehan and Enjolras. “Perhaps a bit quieter.”

It was as flipping a switch. Everyone in the room grew solemn and ducked their heads, and Grantaire couldn’t help but feel entirely responsible for how gloomy everyone looked.

And then Éponine was stepping forward from where she had been lurking in a nearby corner, Gavroche tailing behind only partially pacified. She’d been scolding him no doubt, but he’d bounce back quicker than anyone could snap their fingers.

She had a bottle of water between her fingers, as if conjured. More likely, she had known he’d need it (he’d nearly died from dehydration alone last time) and had gathered it sometime between leaving him to Jehan and Enjolras and reprimanding Gavroche.

When she held it out, the hard lines of her face smoothed out. She looked tired (she’d always been tired five years ago, six years ago, before even then. He’d always done something to cause it and he’d always hated it.

But not as much as he hated the way she looked when she was haunted. That, too, fell on his head).

“It hasn’t been opened,” she told him, and then made a show of twisting open the top with a soft _pop!_ and holding out the top for him to observe.

Bless her, Grantaire projected mentally, even though none of them were mind readers and it would go unspoken. He could not manage a smile, but he grabbed the bottle with as much gratitude as he could – which, as he was simply grabbing a bottle, could not be summarised into much – and tipped back his chin to drink voraciously.

It was only after he had finished the bottle and the cracks in his throat had been eased over that he realised everyone was glancing between him and Éponine. A weight had settled in the air and coiled around them like chains.

Suddenly, his grand consideration of explaining what had happened seemed a Herculean task. Grantaire was no god, no hero (and certainly no Roman). At best, a minor nuisance in someone else’s story (at worst, the villain of others).

A crackling filled the room and, at first, Grantaire was sure he’d set himself on fire again. Then, he turned down to his hand (his skin prickled with an unending situation of being dangled over open flames, the feeling you got putting your hand directly over a candle), where the crumpled plastic of the water bottle dug into his palm.

The air was stifling, suffocating, and everyone was watching him, and someone had scooped the oxygen out from his lungs as though it were butterflies caught in a net and he couldn’t breathe (and this time, is wasn’t because of fucking Enjolras) and-

Fuck, he was too sober for this.

“You burned your tattoo,” Gavroche observed, cutting through some of the smoke crowding Grantaire’s lungs. He stepped forward and unceremoniously grabbed Grantaire’s wrist, running his hand up the lines of the shuddering, dying plant. “Why ‘aven’t you gotten an anti-fire rune by now, anyway?”

Under the inquisitive brown eyes, so pale they glinted like cat’s eye, Grantaire pulled away from the touch. It shouldn’t bother him (why hadn’t he thought of it? Right. He _had_. But it would strip away some of his magic and he wasn’t willing to make that trade. He was selfish and damned for it, he knew-). It _shouldn’t_.

“Why are you here?” he retorted, and he knew his tone was too harsh, too abrasive (and maybe his entire being, his soul, his words, his breath, his skin, and the stupid cage around his heart, maybe he was all fire. Destructive and burning and abrasive and he would burn down anything that got too close. He was Icarus and he was the fire burning off wax wings all at the same time-)

But Gavroche didn’t bristle the way he would have before, the way he would have only a few months ago. He shrugged, as if Grantaire’s hostility was child’s play. “’eard you were suffering one of those fits,” he said. And as he spoke, just like that, that suffocating fog was back and it drove its claws into Grantaire’s throat.

“Gav,” Éponine warned, and put her hand on his shoulder.

But Gavroche rolled his eyes and Grantaire’s gut was lined with nettle because his stomach was tearing itself apart. (He had rolled his eyes so many times. But he’d gotten good at cards, even though he scoffed and Grantaire deliriously told him his eyes would roll back into his head one day, because they spent so much time playing.

It wasn’t like there was so much to do when you were bound to a hospital bed like a prisoner to a cell. Or when everything was fuzzy, or nothing was clear most of the time)

“ _Five years_ ‘ave come and gone,” Gavroche said. The words sunk between Grantaire’s ribcage like a well-placed dagger ( _It’s been a year_ , he’d spat at himself, tugging on curls, sometimes after one or five too many drinks. _It’s been two_. _It’s been three. It's been four_. _It’s been five fucking years, what is wrong with you?_ ).

And suddenly, Grantaire was- he was exhausted. His mind whirred slow, as though processing through molasses, and he forgot he was holding the plastic bottle because it slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.

Éponine eyed him in the way only she could manage, somewhere between hawkish and maternal, and he had to look away because he couldn’t see that now, not like that. He didn’t want to.

(He wanted it all to go away. He wished the ache in his skull would disappear, wish he weren’t so tired so often, wish his joints didn’t cramp like he was well past his prime. He wished he didn’t wake up in cold sweats. Wished he hadn’t tried to play ding-dong-ditch with Death’s doorway twice. Or was it three times? Did it count if you came back to await that blackened entryway from something else that had nearly shoved you right through?)

“Gav,” Éponine said, more insistent than angry now. “Come on, you shouldn’t even be out right now. You were supposed to have been attending to your homework, not playing the nuisance.”

And there was something in Gavroche’s eyes then, a flash right before his face twisted into a scowl. And if he’d thought his chest had hurt before-

(Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Gav hadn’t been unaffected by what had happened. God knew Éponine wasn’t, and she hadn’t been there. She didn’t talk about it, and Grantaire could hear the silent chant of _hypocrite!_ nagging at the back of his mind like a persistent fly, but he knew everything that had happened in the past hadn’t left her unscathed either. And he knew better than to say that to her.

He hadn’t known Gavroche had given much thought to it. He had only seen him in the better moments, the moments he could muster the will to exist. But maybe it had hurt, and maybe it wasn’t as easy for him as Grantaire had believed)

As Éponine clasped her hand around Gavroche’s to pull him along, she turned to Grantaire. “You need rest,” she addressed him, and there was the unquestionable glint in her eye that he would join her. He always had, always used her to get out of situations such as this.

There was nothing, next to nothing, that Grantaire wanted than to leave with Éponine. But he knew- this wasn’t about to be dismissed. His friends could only wear blindfolds for so long (and Enjolras- what must he think now? Would he regret offering Grantaire into his private space? Would he regret noticing, after so long of naught?), they would only pry later and…

And Grantaire knew that if he stewed over it, likely, the situation would grow out of hand and he would go to extremes to avoid it.

But _dammit_ , he didn’t want to have this conversation now (ever).

“Ép,” he said, but it came out a croak. A gravelly constricted noise, and it hurt his throat. It hurt to talk, hurt to breathe, hurt to _be_. Éponine’s eyes bored through him and they cut like razors. She was all sharp edges and fangs and claws and maybe he needed someone who had a gentler touch. A featherlight whisper.

Maybe he was just tired.

Gavroche’s gaze bit into him, the scowl replaced by a near scrutinising suspicion, like he could uncover the secrets hidden in someone’s soul, in Grantaire’s, if he narrowed his eyes enough.

He made the mistake of looking away from Éponine, unable to handle the sheer weight of her questioning stare and let his eyes drift as if by a magnet towards Courfeyrac. And something crumbled in him, because in the three years they’d known each other Grantaire had _never_ seen his eyes so full of tears. The tips of his nose and ears were turning red. Combeferre was standing behind him which meant he couldn’t yet gauge the distress his partner was in.

(For one so open with their emotions, who seemed to wear their heart on their sleeve, Courfeyrac never cried. It was like he was always, _always_ smiling- but maybe that was the root of it. Maybe he wasn’t as open as he made himself out to be, as he put up a pretence. Maybe Grantaire shouldn’t assume he’s the only one whose brain was twisted into knots, fine lace threads catching and weaving themselves into a jumbled mess)

“Oh,” Grantaire whispered, without really meaning to. And then, as if on cue, his eyes began to burn, and he only realised his cheeks were damp when Courfeyrac made a small noise and proceeded to cross the distance between them and wrap Grantaire in tight hug.

“It’s okay- oh, R, it’s okay,” Courfeyrac said. His voice was thick with tears, but it was consoling- and why was Courfeyrac trying to calm _him_ when he was the one who was upset. Grantaire had upset him and Courf was trying to placate _him_.

It was awkward, Courfeyrac and Jehan were the only two Amis shorter that Grantaire. He had to take care of Courfeyrac’s horns but- but his chin rest on Courfeyrac’s shoulder and a part of him wished it was someone else just because he needed to bury his nose into something solid, needed to escape the feeling of scrutiny and- and it _shouldn’t upset him so much_.

(He didn’t know what ‘it’ was. He didn’t know why he was crying. He didn’t know a lot of things)

Another arm wrapped around behind him, the other presumably around Courfeyrac, and it didn’t take more than a sensation to feel the security Jehan’s magic cast around them. Grantaire shifted, so he could at least pretend to hide his face in powder waves and the freshly blossomed flowers sprouting like a crown on Jehan’s head.

He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, only that when they all finally pulled away in a mutual motion, his throat and lungs and eyes all burned. His lips were cracked and tasted like salt, his heart beating sluggishly but far too loud in his chest but- but-

There was no embarrassment, no shame, like Grantaire had always expected. He was tired, still, so very tired, but he was safe. His friends, surrounding him and even watching him at they were, they would keep him safe.

Éponine had approached him again, Gavroche no longer attached to her hand, and reached out to touch his arm as he ducked his head. He did not feel ashamed (yet), but that did not make him feel less exposed.

Then the nausea hit him, like taking a punch right to the gut. He felt safe around his friends, and he could have so easily turned them all to ash. He was safe around his friends but- but they were not safe around him.

 _Not safe_.

“What was that?” Jehan asked, still right beside him, still talking quiet like the lull of a distant windchime. A constant presence, grounding. And he could have burned that all down, just because he’d lost control of his fire again.

But he was too parched again and he hadn’t realised he’d even said the words aloud the first time. He didn’t think he could bring himself to repeat it, didn’t think he could bring himself to say anything.

“Was it your fire that caused your scars?” Bahorel asked before anyone else could get another word in edgewise. He was lingering near, brows twisted in such confliction as he watched as if he disliked being left out of their small, inner circle.

And- well, and Grantaire should have expected that too. One day. Bahorel did not pry like some of the others might have, was happy to simply let sleeping dogs lie (sometimes, anyway, he wasn’t exactly known for his tact or restraint or filter). It was an old wound and it showed. But that did not mean that he would leave it, would be able to keep it behind his tongue forever.

(Maybe, somewhere deep and visceral- maybe it wasn’t the inability to get the words out. Maybe he was scared- he kept their expectations of him as low as he could bend them without snapping them in half, pulled the image they carved of him until it was grinding into the earth but-

But what if it hadn’t been enough? What if this shattered everything? An illusion, gone, like a mirror knocked from a shelf or a poorly hammered nail in the wall?)

“Scars?” Joly’s cane tapped insistently against the hardwood floor, his finger twitching where he held it. Bossuet stood beside him and they peered at Grantaire.

There were so many questions. He could feel them all building up like bricks, like rubble to stack a wall. He knew they’d stay quiet if he asked but-

“Yes.” The words fell from his lips before he could recall them, but it was past the time for locking the truth away and throwing out the key. “The cause was my magic, it-” Grantaire dug himself into a hole.

(It what? It was an accident? No. It wasn’t his fault? No. It had only burned him? No.

 _The cause was my magic_ , but what then? The cause, but what of the outcome? What of the cure, the results? There had been no cure. The reward?)

“Forty-six,” said Grantaire, before he could stop himself. From one side, Enjolras narrowed his eyes and the other, Éponine’s widened.

(A massacre)

“You swore to me you would not look back on it!” Éponine snapped, but her voice was not so hot as it was fearful. “ _R_ ,” she added, like it was an infliction, but her voice was a dull blade. And maybe she was tired too, tired of him, tired of watching him teeter his wellbeing on a tightrope for so long.

Everyone’s gaze was heavy on him. He could hardly breathe. His ribs ached and his lungs shrivelled, and he let himself sink to the floor.

If this was to be a confessional, he wanted to be grounded before the hammer of judgement, or justice, or whatever pointed excuse, slammed down and shattered his skull like glass.

As if leading a twisted sort of procession, everyone eased themselves to the ground. Even Enjolras, who hesitated a moment, before shifting slightly towards him and folding his legs (his brows were dipped and curved and his lips set together and if someone was ever to put a canvas in front of Grantaire while Enjolras was nearby, he could paint him for an eternity) as he settled down.

They must have been a spectacle. A group of thirteen adults and a teenager, sitting in a convoluted oval like they were back in preschool for a sharing circle in the back end of an empty gym. If they’d had chairs, it could have even been passed as a cultish, group therapy session (Grantaire hoped to God none of his friends could relate to what he’d gone through).

“Who has heard tell of-” he sucked in a deep breath. His ribs twisted and hurt like they’d grown barbs and aimed to shred him from the inside. “Of the Myriel Memorial Auditorium.” It did not come out the question he’d meant to ask. It came out sounding like a deathbed profession.

There were beats of silence, the reversal of drums pounding non-existent in another room, and Grantaire could not look anywhere but his hands. Could not look at another soul before it was over (if he did, too soon, he would not be able to finish. If he did, too soon, he would stand and flee and lock himself in his flat and let it turn into a jungle and never, never admit anyone to see him again).

Jehan cleared their throat. A small, dodger blue flower was sprouting in the palm of their upturned hands, resting on their legs. “It burned to ash, five years ago, during a monster-blooded art exhibition, is that right?”

“It is,” Musichetta chimed in. Her voice was the feeling of listening to a kitten purr, but Grantaire could not look up. “I recall the story about that. I resided near to the auditorium then. You could see the smoke, the colour of new rust, for days- a magic fire.” From the direction she, Joly, and Bossuet were nestled together, Grantaire heard the tap of her nails against the hardwood. “Outlets said there was a sole survivor. Never caught the instigator, and the sharks never did find out who the pup that lived to tell the tale was.”

(The sharks, the journalists, had never found the pup because Éponine’s fangs were sharper than a vampire’s and nobody was ever stupid enough to attempt sidling past the mother wolf to get to him.

The instigator was never caught, because it was hard to interview someone who was so sick, they couldn’t even retain their own name, and the police didn’t care enough about the monster-blooded to stay on the cases for two months)

Grantaire ran an absent hand through his hair, his fingers grasping the curls like hungry claws and pulling so hard he could feel it ring in his skull. He was afraid- he was afraid if he were to open his mouth, smoke would pour out (or blood. Or lies. He wasn’t sure which would be worse).

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. There was a reason Combeferre was one of the smartest of Les Amis.

“You were there,” Combeferre said, quiet and level and almost achingly calm. Grantaire fought against every instinct in his body that told him to meet that gaze. He did not wish to see the kind of accusation he might find there. It wouldn’t take a genius to put together Grantaire’s lack of control over his fire and his presence at the auditorium the night it was reduced to rubble.

“Forty-six,” Jehan murmured. Their voice was endless and held a kind of weight that didn’t belong in their gentle lilt. “Forty-six civilians were caught in those flames.”

Pain split through his head as Grantaire yanked his hand from his curls to hit against the floor, taking some of the dark locks with him. The noise echoed like a whip through the room and heat burst in his knuckles. “Forty-six civilians were killed,” he snarled, and at some point, tears had started dripping from his cheeks again. “Forty-six lives turned to dust and the executioner got to _live_!”

“It was not your _fault_!” Éponine interrupted, before Grantaire could continue, because he could feel the pressure building up at the back of his throat. He could feel everything he thought had come and gone, all the anger and hurt and fear scratching at the back of his mouth like bile.

“Speak that to the forty-six headstones scattered in graveyards,” he shot back. “It was my fire, Éponine. What else should matter?”

“Should a knife be held responsible for a murder? A torch be put to trial for the hand that wields it to commit arson?” Cosette was beside Éponine now, Grantaire could see her dusty blue sneakers and didn’t know when she’d gotten there. Éponine’s voice was still loud, almost accusing, but the edges were not sharp, not angry anymore.

(He hadn’t realised how much this had settled in his chest, like dust in an untouched attic. Hadn’t realised what he thought was progress was regression, was locking it all away in a chest and hiding it from the naked eye.

It was likely Éponine had already found out that he’d neglected therapy for the last year, but it wasn’t her fault that he’d been falling back into old habits. If you couldn’t see it, feel it, surely it could not exist? But she wasn’t responsible for him, wasn’t his keeper, and it couldn’t, wouldn’t, be held against her for not noticing something not even he himself had noticed.

And he wasn’t stupid, Grantaire had heard _survivor’s guilt_ before. Like an incantation, a chant, constantly repeated to him over the years but it was still _his_ fire. They might have been trapped in that auditorium by the human sorcerers who had spelled the doors and windows with curses and marbled silver and iron, but they wouldn’t be dead. If he’d paid more attention to the water on his vanity station, on why a fresh bottle hadn’t been unopened, there wouldn’t be forty-six lives lost forever like memories to the Lethe)

He deflated, pulling his nails across the floor to emit a low scratching noise. His own breathing was too loud, too jagged on his ears, and he felt like he’d been encased in a bubble, separated from his friends. He wanted to reiterate that it was still his fire, but the words crumbled like dried leaves in his mouth.

“Kindest way I have been entitled a tool,” Grantaire sighed, tracing his fingers mournfully up the wilted ivy and wild blossoms around his arm. His throat was tight and there would have been no difference in how he felt if someone had set a grand piano upon his chest. His mind was thick with fog and-

And maybe that was enough honesty, vulnerability, for one day.

The effort to look up at everyone was an austere one, his eyes stinging with the aftermath of his sorrow and the dried tears coating his cheeks turning sticky.

He had expected many things- revulsion, animosity, at best perhaps bewilderment, pity. Maybe they would leave, Enjolras would finally have a reason to send him away from their meetings (who wanted a firebug killer in their social justice club?), and he’d go into further regression and relearn how to drown in alcohol that embittered his throat and his clarity.

Of the many things, he had not expected Jehan to reach across his lap to cradle his left wrist in their hands and close their eyes. They let out even breaths through their nose, murmured something Grantaire could barely hear and did not understand in the slightest.

He watched, his heart beating sluggishly in his chest like someone had poured honey down his throat and it had gotten confused on its way and began to fill the cage around his heart. A warm sensation, like basking in sun rays, rolled up his arm. Not un unsettling warmth, one that was more than welcome and felt the way something sweet tasted.

The ivy and blossoms up his arm shivered. Starting from his wrist and working up, very gradually, colour and life began to grow back into the florae. He watched, with horrendously ill-concealed breathlessness and awe so forceful it felt akin to being thrown in a tidal wave.

Once every expired inch of the ivy and its flower had been renewed, Jehan opened their eyes and reclaimed their hands with a smile that rivalled the softest of blankets.

“And so the lighten’d heart soon learns to see, that it still lives, and beats, and ought to beat. Off’ring itself with joy and willingly, in grateful payment for a gift so sweet,” they said, and though their voice was gentle it washed over the entirety of the group.

Grantaire considered Jehan, his heart stuttering awkwardly in his chest. The thickness clogging its rhythm began to drain and the pressure of his ribs grew lessened, the steel cage more pliable. (Was it too much to hope for a transformation? For his ribs to become as wings and for his heart to beat in freedom and his lungs to taste unpolluted and unthreatening air?)

“I would not call this a gift of any measure,” he grumbled, his protest weak and dissolving as it spilled from his tongue.

He had expected, but not the security and steady assurance on the lips and in the eyes of all his friends. They looked upon him, with warmth, compassion, and in the case of Enjolras (how had he grown brave enough in those few seconds to behold him? But he was, in that moment, so very mortal, his edges filed down until he would, should, be a blessing and smooth to the touch), prismatic and determined.

(He did not look down on Grantaire the way he once had when Grantaire had been swimming the upstream river of sobriety, as one of his many causes to grasp with both hands and fix until the accomplishment filled his entire being and he could step aside from his conquest, satisfied. Maybe Enjolras should not have been compared to a statue but the sculptor, breathing life and liberty into every injustice he laid eyes upon.

He looked upon – at and not down at – Grantaire with the fire not of justice but of hope. There was, underlying, guilt behind those radiant eyes, and perhaps a severed kind of sympathy. Perhaps to be considered even empathy, understanding)

“That was not the point. It still lives, and beats, and _ought_ to beat,” Jehan replied. Their conviction and sincerity were heavy but not crushing, a welcome weight that set his clouded mind to rest, and Grantaire found that the others had gently tilted their head towards him and Jehan, in acknowledgement, in agreement.

(He was too empty of emotion to shed any more tears, but if he had not been, he would have cried. His expectations had fallen so far, had been cut so deeply, he doubted his own friends. It was unfair, he knew.

_Baby steps._

It wasn’t going to leave him, but maybe- maybe it wouldn’t have to. Not completely.

Not if he did not have to be alone)

 

* * *

 

The height of autumn had come and doused the trees in carnelian and desire reds, canary and daffodil yellows, rust and cider oranges. The heat of the dying summer had paved the path for chilled nights and winds that made scarves the new shade of attraction.

Enjolras frequently turned the heat in the secret lair up at least five degrees too warm (which was at least more comfortable now as it had not been when summer was still cooking the pavement and the nights were still hot enough to make you sweat on an evening stroll), which Grantaire did not complain about but may have adjusted the thermostat once or twice. Or many more times.

(It was of no consequence. Either Enjolras did not notice or did not care enough to mention it. Or the coffees Grantaire had begun a tradition of bringing to him were enough to placate him if he did happen to mind)

The tension between them had seeming evaporated. Or, the umbrage had, anyway. Oh, they still fought at the meetings, still bickered and spat at each other, but the words didn’t hold the same poison. Ever since they had begun simply _talking_ , begun to coexist with each other without the glue of their friends to keep them on stable terms. (Enjolras had even begun asking him to stay, after the meetings, with him and variations of Combeferre and Courfeyrac present. Handed over arguments and papers and told him to find the weakness and rip it apart. It was cathartic, in some ways, and devastating in others.

By ‘others’, he meant the even _more_ time he was spending with Enjolras, even if one or both of the other members of the triumvirate were there. But he couldn’t disentangle himself, he was if far too deep, and one of these days Enjolras was going to sit upright in his chair and look up at Grantaire with his glittering eyes and jaw set in determination and Grantaire was… probably going to crumble. Or melt. Or disintegrate. He was personally hoping to disintegrate. It sounded more dramatic)

But the absence of the enmity had turned into a different kind of friction. Enjolras only ever seemed at ease with him occasionally, most of the time when someone else was around. They didn’t talk often at Lamarque’s, despite Enjolras insisting Grantaire could visit him any time. Despite mentioning how he would value Grantaire’s arguments against his own on some of the topics he was setting up – for protests, for calling government officials, for local small businesses, God, what did he not craft arguments for?

It was unfair of him to presume without asking, he knew, but Grantaire couldn’t help but wonder. After his episode and admission in the gym a couple months back, nobody had been pressing him with questions. Not in bushels, anyway. His friend took their time, spreading out their curiosities over time (one question a week seemed to be the most consistent pattern he could find.

It wasn’t asked, and he neglected to mention that it had almost killed him, twice. Whether that meant they already knew or didn’t think it had been that bad, Grantaire wasn’t sure).

But it had been not long after that Enjolras had began acting more sporadic. He didn’t scowl at Grantaire as often but _frowned_ , in a tight knit that Grantaire had never seen before and had not the slightest idea what to think of. He emitted auras more often, but they were often tumultuous and changing like lights in a nightclub, and hardly ever were they projected (Enjolras hardly ever projected his auras, the only times recently had been their argument at Grantaire’s flat when Enjolras had brought him the coffee and food, and when he’d been coming down from his panic at the gym. Normally, if he were to emit, it was only a representation of how he felt, not a nudge to anyone else).

And the jumping. Whenever Grantaire happened to touch him (intentional or not), he would flinch, as though Grantaire had burned him (and there had been no more fiery incidents since the gym, Grantaire had been mindful of keeping it in check). _Hell_ , he would flinch if Grantaire drew too close to him, and then he’d stare at Grantaire for a long few moments and then there was that frown.

(Nobody had asked yet what Éponine had meant when she said Grantaire was used as a pawn, but he could see the same look Enjolras had in his eyes when she’d said something. Maybe the others had forgotten, or brushed it off, but Enjolras hadn’t. He hadn’t said a thing about it.

Grantaire couldn’t fault him either. Not if the behaviour was borne from blame, from accusation. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who saw the blood on his hands)

All this ran through his mind as he shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet, hovering outside Enjolras’ door. A little red post-it note clung to the door, right above his eyeline, that had a crossed out _Enjolras_ that was followed underneath by _Ange_ with a smiley face for good measure. (He’d put it there two weeks after Enjolras had first brought him there, and he’d taken it in stride that Enjolras had not taken it down. He hadn’t said anything about it either, but small victories were all Grantaire could hope for with him at this point)

Maybe it had all been a mistake. He should have told Éponine about what Enjolras had done, what he’d offered. Should have told her that maybe – maybe – his heart still fluttered when he thought about dancing. That while he’d been teetering as of late, that he _missed_ dancing.

(But that would mean shattering the odd intimacy that he’d established with Enjolras and- sure, it was pathetic how much he coveted this and Enjolras and the way that neither of them could sleep sometimes and how it meant Enjolras would peer into the studio at times in pyjamas and a sleepy gaze and hair mussed and glistening. How sometimes he’d come in, sit with Grantaire while he stretched or while he painted – he’d since brought over his ‘art survival kit’ and set up for when the lightning struck him there – and maybe they’d talk or maybe they’d just be there, in those moments, together)

But even though he missed it- his chest was tight, and he’d tried to follow simple motions and the air had left his lungs and his vision had grown fuzzy and-

And he was scared. He wanted to dance but he’d forgotten to stop to ask if he could again, if he’d be permitted that after what had become of him last time.

(The stretching had helped but he was still sore, not as agile as he used to be. At twenty-four, he hadn’t expected to be having joint problems. But, he supposed, at nineteen, he hadn’t expected to be trapped until a collapsed building for three days, or spend nearly two months in a hospital hooked up to IVs and delirious because, as it turned out, your body didn’t like the infection and weakened immune system from a third-degree burn and its countermeasure was to hurt itself in the process of trying to fix that)

He stared at the stupid note he’d put on the door, and it taunted him, too red and too loud and so very, very fitting for Enjolras. He scowled at it. Why was he there? Why had he entertained such an idea? Enjolras was plainly discomfited to learn the event that had caused Grantaire to grind his dancing to a halt- why would he be any less so standing by him while he tried to recover that?

It had been a mistake, to think of requesting Enjolras’ help (to what? Grantaire wasn’t sure himself. What would he ask of Enjolras? He had run over that until his mental footprints had beat it into the ground. In truth, he wasn’t sure what would help, only that he couldn’t be alone when he tried to dance again). With the conviction that he could settle for painting the surprise watercolour for Combeferre and Courfeyrac’s upcoming anniversary, he spun on his heel and moved away from the door.

The door which opened before he’d gotten even five footsteps away.

“What purpose does it serve to linger outside of my door for near ten minutes, only to leave without bothering to knock?”

( _Warm. Familiar_. Grantaire sometimes forgot that Enjolras had, evidently, taken to memorising the exact sensation of his magic so thoroughly that he could tell where Grantaire stood in a room with a blindfold on)

Grantaire turned, reluctant and with warmed cheeks, and peered up at where Enjolras was leaning out of the doorframe. He appeared amiable enough today. That did not mean that Grantaire’s stomach was not set off swirling like a high tide now that Enjolras was standing a few feet away, confronting him, never mind why he had come in the first place.

(It was getting increasingly toiling not to kiss Enjolras. On his hands, when he reached up as if he could scrub drowsiness away, where Grantaire could so easily grab them and press warm knuckles to his cracked lips as if to drink from the fountain of youth. On his brow, when he was in the midst of pontificating, and it was set so far Grantaire sometimes worried he’d frown like that forever.

On his mouth, to quiet him, in the midst of a tiff between them, because Enjolras never looked more _alive_ than when he was in the heat of an argument. On the mouth, when he came to visit Grantaire in the early hours of the morning, or when his lips curled just so when Grantaire brought him his ridiculous coffee order)

“It- it is nothing,” Grantaire hastened to reply, when he gathered that he had been struck dumbfounded for perhaps a moment too long. “It is not of significance. I did not intend on disrupting you.”

Enjolras’ brow twitched and- ah. The frown had made its return. “It is not a disruption. I welcome it, in fact.” He softened once more and slipped out of the door and shut it behind him. “The respite would be appreciated.”

And- and- well, when Enjolras said it like that, _looked_ at him like that (and yeah, okay, those were the ghosts of circles beneath his eyes and he must be so incredibly tired if he had them because fae just- didn’t get them. Fae were beauty perfected and personified, they healed fast like many monster-blooded, and they did not get dark circles under their marble blue eyes), Grantaire couldn’t exactly deny him.

“I-” His stomach twisted itself into knots and if Enjolras’ warm expression wasn’t falling into something else, something worried- Grantaire’s throat tightened and he had to look downcast at the out of place shag carpet (it wasn’t the ‘60s, why was it even here? And so new looking?). “It is foolish,” he mumbled, unable to raise his voice any farther.

Because Enjolras was perceptive in everything but Grantaire’s feelings, he stepped forward and carefully uncrossed Grantaire’s arms that he hadn’t even noticed he’d wrapped around himself. Enjolras’ touch was hot, and heat wasn’t Grantaire ally, but he would let himself the burn if it meant Enjolras kept touching him, kept holding his arms (firm, but not rough, and maybe that’s a little too much information for him to have but- but Enjolras was surprising physical. It wasn’t the first time they’d made contact with each other, but it awakened something in Grantaire’s chest every time they did. When had Enjolras gotten so comfortable with him?)

“R,” he said, quiet in a way that Grantaire had never realised he was until they’d started seeing each other more regularly. “Grantaire,” he repeated, when Grantaire didn’t acknowledge he’d spoken. “I severely doubt that whatever troubles you is foolish. Please.”

The way Enjolras spoke- Grantaire almost laughed (not pleasantly, maybe a little hysterically, he wasn’t sure how to pin down the mood he was in). “You are foolish to believe so.” He wet his lips, and finally glanced up at Enjolras, whose expression was halfway between a scowl and something pained. That made Grantaire chuckle, from the back of his throat. “Don’t let it slip your memory who you are speaking too. But- it’s… all right, could you-?”

He gestured vaguely behind him, towards the direction of the dance studio. There was an abrupt rise of heat in his cheeks, across his face, and he could only pray Enjolras was not close enough to see it.

The pair of them had certainly developed nothing compared to the hive mind that Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac shared, but his request clicked immediately for Enjolras without the words ever falling from Grantaire’s tongue.

Enjolras also somehow picked up on the limbo Grantaire was inhabiting and dropped only one of his hands while using the other to lead Grantaire dutifully towards the studio door.

The lights were on and glared brightly in their normal incandesce, but the second Grantaire and Enjolras stepped foot into the room, they dimmed to a muted sort of grey (the studio was even more magic-sensitive than his flat. Grantaire was only glad that, if Enjolras noticed the rosy tinges in the lights, he did not know what they meant).

Ever since he had settled into the routine of coming, of being here and being allowed to exist here in his own bubble (that Enjolras occasionally wandered into), the studio had become… well, not as empty as before. Grantaire did not own so many possessions, but he’d scattered at least a third of his belongings in the room. Sketchbooks, crates full of paints or pencils or palettes where shoved against the wall.

And because Enjolras had taken a peculiar interest in Grantaire’s wellbeing, he’d _insisted_ (Christ, had he insisted. They’d fought about it for nearly two hours, a back and forth that had become their only fight that escalated far enough to shouting since the beginning of Lamarque’s. And because winning an argument with Enjolras was akin being thrown to a pit of starving lions and trying to beat them, well-) they get furniture for the place.

Which had led to the purchase of a ratty sofa that felt like heaven to lay on (had Grantaire fallen asleep on it a few times? Perhaps. It was nobody’s business but his own if he had) and was far bigger than he needed for a sofa. There were three hanging plants that Jehan had gifted him to ‘freshen up his flat’ (he was just glad they hadn’t been over to see their absence because he really, _really_ loved having them in the studio). There was a table littered with napkins from the Musain with doodles in pen and a container of brownies that had been a collaboration between Jehan and Marius and somehow, he’d ended up as their testing rat.

(They were spectacular but had that been a surprise? No)

Enjolras stopped and turned to face him once he had allowed himself to be dragged to the centre of the room. When Enjolras let go of his wrist, Grantaire felt something wilt in his chest. “What services can I render you today?” Enjolras says. He should sound more tired, with those smudges beneath his eyes (they looked like a finger had accidentally smeared paint over its subject. It only made him think of the paintings he’d done, the night Enjolras had walked beside him and asked about the rally, Enjolras at the Musain with the windows and the dying sun behind him, illuminating him), but of course, he did not.

(Because the universe was cruel to Grantaire)

He managed to stifle himself from saying _a great number_. He might have gotten suggestive before, hadn’t lost his streak and most of them went over Enjolras’ head anyway, but he was afraid now of fracturing the balance they’ve gotten. Enjolras’ scale had fallen to make level with Grantaire’s and that was beyond terrifying.

The lights flickered and even if Enjolras didn’t understand the colours reflecting Grantaire’s emotions the way his aura reflected his, he had silently figured out somewhere along the way that his magic interfered with the electricity. Enjolras frowned. “Grantaire?”

“I’m not sure I can dance again,” Grantaire said before his mind could catch his mouth. He crossed his arms across his chest again, reflexive, and turned to stare at the wall opposite the one of mirrors.

He could hear his heartbeat ring in his ears, a distant sound like a drumbeat coming through a wall. It took several of the thuds before Enjolras said, cautiously, “I’m afraid I don’t understand? Why-” the air felt as though it rippled around him, “are you under this presumption?”

Grantaire fought back that little hysterical bubble of laughter at the back of his throat again. “Because I have been trying. I have been trying for an hour now and every attempt-” He hadn’t explained the connection between the auditorium and his dancing to anyone. Nobody had asked or made that jump, and why should they?

But how could he express that abyss then? Every attempt _and I feel dizzy, as though someone has put a blinder on my senses_. Every attempt _and the ground shatters beneath me._ Every attempt _and I am trapped_. Every attempt _and forty-six people have been slaughtered_.

“It hurts,” he said instead, and forced himself to at least glance in Enjolras’ direction. He couldn’t look him right on, had to stare at the empty space beside his shoulder and neck’s meeting. It didn’t explain anything, he knew, and he had to say _something_ because he could still see that frown on Enjolras’ lovely face. “I’m not even using my magic at all, there is not an ember and- I still can’t.”

He looked at Enjolras then, and it took him hardly any time at all for his brows to curve up, just so, his eyes to crinkle, and his mouth to part. “You were performing the night the auditorium…” he didn’t finish, didn’t have to. Grantaire bit the corner of his mouth, and nodded as slight as he could.

It took him a moment to muster the will, blood pumping through his ears like a chant all the while, but he finally managed to murmur, “I want to. Dance. I want to and I do not know how.” He grimaced. “Only that I cannot alone.”

It pained him to say the words out loud, like his skin was paper and the words were scissors. It would have stung with Éponine, but it _hurt_ with Enjolras. He didn’t know why, he made sure Enjolras never thought too highly of him, never raised him to a place that he could be knocked back down from. Enjolras had already seen him heart deep in a panic, had seen him so drunk he couldn’t stand.

(But seeing and admitting were two different things, two different beasts)

Enjolras’ composure softened. His shoulders relaxed, chin tilted ever so slightly downwards to watch Grantaire. “What can I do?”

( _A great number of things! None, mind you, that would be of any help to rendering me capable of dance again!_ )

“I’m not sure,” Grantaire said, finally dropping his arms to his sides. “I had not reached that outcome.” Which is true. Because instead of becoming more predictable the closer they got, Enjolras had only become even more of an enigma, more complex than Grantaire had ever imagined.

And there was a flicker, a crack in Enjolras’ features, and Grantaire barely stifled his curiosity, chewing his tongue to keep the question in his mouth where it belonged.

_What made you waver so? What was it that I spoke of that sunk in?_

“Could you- talk? Perhaps?” Grantaire winced. All of it, this, made him dismally nauseous. He had not yet decided whether the vulnerability, baring his tender spots to _Enjolras_ , was a positive or negative. He was only assured with the knowledge, should Enjolras ridicule him (which wasn’t fair to Enjolras at all, but what was life if not unfair? What was _Grantaire_?), he would melt into a heap on the floor and cease to function.

(Sue him if he was a little sensitive. So maybe it wouldn’t be immediate, but nobody else knew where he was. He knew, from experience, he could easily waste all his remaining time away with simple inactivity. It had gotten worse after the auditorium and the hospital stay, something bland turned sour, turned to vinegar. A habit switched out for an inhibiting vice)

“I won’t even pester you with commentary, should you wish to talk about the discussions of revoking the monster-blooded registration.” He’d begun to move even as he grinned at Enjolras (he wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint where in their timeline that simply talking with, existing around Enjolras was enough to lift his spirits, try as he might).

It was only a simple dance. Easy, something a beginner could pick up. It was nothing like his last dance, none of the same rhythms or steps or movements. It was manual, and it was curious how familiar the motions already were to him.

“The committee is outmatched. They need- hell, they deserve more support. There should be more, we must perform better, push for more support,” Enjolras replied. But there was something odd, something dispassionate in his voice, and Grantaire never _never_ expected to hear Enjolras sound _dispassionate_ about societal justice.

“Must you sound so excited about it?” Grantaire asked and- and it was good. This was good. Teasing Enjolras was easy and it was acting as a damper on the piece of survival instinct that flashed warning lights and operated his mind’s fog machine.

He was moving away from Enjolras, almost too far and began to bend back towards him, as if anchored. (Orbiting. He had long since begun orbiting Enjolras and- well. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t failed to expect as such)

Enjolras was watching the movements, and his eyes were dark like the ocean under starlight, but he was frowning and-

It was back. _That_ frown and _that_ look in his eyes and Grantaire faltered slightly. To his surprise, Enjolras lurched forward to catch him, and Grantaire-

He didn’t stop. He began to drag Enjolras with him through the steps. And Enjolras wasn’t a good dancer, he wasn’t graceful the way he was during a speech, wasn’t empowered the way he could be when he was talking to a crowd. It was awkward and clumsy but Grantaire’s chest didn’t hurt, his ribs didn’t dig into his lungs, and his heart could _breathe_. He was safe, his magic couldn’t harm him, nobody could. Not when Enjolras was stepping on his feet and allowing Grantaire to pull him around like a puppet.

(At first, he was worried Enjolras was uncomfortable, but Grantaire was an experienced enough dancer to feel that Enjolras wasn’t disquieted. Quite the opposite, he was entirely too relaxed under Grantaire’s touch)

“What had she meant?” Enjolras asked, after Grantaire had been parading him around for several moments. He was not tense, per say, but he was- not relaxed anymore, either. “Éponine, what she spoke of…”

Grantaire knew he went stiff and Enjolras winced in response, clearly able to feel it just as Grantaire had felt his body’s serenity moments before. But-

But the time of hiding behind the veil was over and- he was in a state, that day. But perhaps not such an unwilling one. (And maybe, too, he was growing weary of everyone stepping on eggshells around him. It was clear, he had neglected to treat the sore in his mind, but for all his lack of progression, there had been _some_. He _had_ gotten better, it had still been five years. He wouldn’t combust)

“Speak plainly,” Grantaire told him, pulling him back into the rhythm once more. Enjolras peered at him, and Grantaire risked stepping apart from him for a moment, to twist and roll on his own for a few beats. And when the threat of losing his crutch began to creep back into his chest, he simply sidled back next to him and Enjolras didn’t appear to mind in the slightest.

(Grantaire failed to notice the rouge dusting over his cheeks)

“She spoke of you as a pawn,” Enjolras said after an uncertain pause, as though unsure whether it was truly okay for him to be forthright. Grantaire, in response, did his best to relax pointedly (and maybe ignore the fact that the dance was starting to become less of an improvised, partnered abstract, and more of an uneven swing dance, without Grantaire actually swinging Enjolras anywhere.

The mental conjuration of teaching Enjolras to dance- fuck. Oh- _fuck_ )

Enjolras was wincing, however, and Grantaire slowed his movements and forced himself to remain at least an arm’s length away from Enjolras as the realisation of _what_ it was he was doing, with Enjolras, was beginning to trickle into his mind.

“That must sound as though I believe you would commit an act such as that on your own terms,” Enjolras murmured. He dropped his gaze to their feet and worried at his bottom lip. “I do not, forgive me if I’m overstepping my-”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire interrupted and kept his tone lowered. Enjolras’ gaze met his once more and he looked far too tortured for Grantaire’s heart not to twinge painfully (any amount of tortured on Enjolras’ face, the twist on his mouth and brow and set of his jaw, was too much, didn’t belong there). “The only thing you are overstepping is onto my toes.”

Colour burst across Enjolras’ cheeks and it was a sight unlike Grantaire had ever seen before. Grantaire had seen Enjolras blush before, turn a pretty pink that made his ribs creak, but _now_ … his cheeks were brushed over with pink, but also silver, also cornflower, also wisteria, also marmalade. Grantaire’s finger itched and he fought the urge to abandon Enjolras and paint him instead.

“I’ve never had the endowment for it,” Enjolras admitted. “My parents, my tutor, even Courfeyrac, grew poorly disappointed. There were unsure of what to do with me at gatherings and balls, the most likely to catch a suitor are those who are most nimble on their toes.” He sniffed, but his lip twitched. “Not that it bothered me any. You,” Enjolras’ cheeks appeared to sparkle (or it might have been the lights, Grantaire had forgotten to keep them in check and they’d turned misty golden and subdued garnet), “You would have had a line-up after you.”

Grantaire, remarkably, did not even consider self-deprecation. Forgot, for a moment, drowned under nostalgia. “The Courts were where I made something of this,” he said, twisting them around into a lethargic spin. “I was not allowed out of the confines of the family’s house I played servant to, but once they found out I had the knack for dancing…”

Enjolras’ brow had become furrowed again. “You were a slave?”

The raw indignation in Enjolras’ voice made Grantaire snort. “It was nothing of concern, as I’m sure you are thinking. Preferable, almost, to the life I had been tied to formerly. Aside from the isolation, but that was not a new concept to me.” At Enjolras’ sustained frown boring into him, Grantaire shrugged (under Enjolras’ hands. Enjolras had put his _hands_ on Grantaire’s _shoulders_. Did he expect Grantaire to be recall how to breathe like that?). “My father was not a virtuous man, but he did not want the explanations that came with a half-breed son. He kept me where nobody could ask questions.”

“He was _ashamed_? Of you?”

He had to slow Enjolras now, make him pause in his steps to give him a dry look. “You cannot say you never have been,” he replied, curtly, and perhaps a bit cruelly.

Enjolras had not been unsavoury towards him of late, and there was too much hurt in the way he winced at Grantaire’s words. (It was still _true_ , and he’d had every right to feel it. Any of their friends could say the same)

“Not, to say, that I would run from you,” Grantaire continued. He gave his best attempt at a reassuring smile (had he entirely forgotten why they were here in the first place? What Enjolras was doing by allowing himself to be spirited along with Grantaire? Perhaps), and Enjolras’ brow began to smooth. “Which is how I got to the Fae Courts. I’d fancied that maybe it would be more satisfactory there. That I… might find my mother, and she would actually be pleased to see me.”

There was only a split second between the words leaving his mouth and Enjolras’ fingers digging rapidly (and painfully) in his shoulders, eyes wide. “Your half _fae_?” he demanded and- well, Grantaire could see where he’d drawn the wrong conclusions.

(How could one forget, sometimes, that they didn’t possess something they once had anymore? His horns had been such a defining feature- he’d lived without them for nearing six years, and he _still_ forgot?)

“No,” he replied. Though, he couldn’t deny he was amused that Enjolras could possibly think he was fae. “Half puck. Which would be why my magic feels more familiar to you.”

His stomach twisted the moment the words left his mouth, the moment Enjolras’ eyes flitted to the top of his sable curls. Enjolras wasn’t stupid, he was a fae. He’d have met other pucks before (and he’d know they had horns).

But if he had already begun this… Grantaire had been good at riding highs before (though, maybe not the right kinds). And Courfeyrac would _probably_ tell him one day (he wouldn’t, but Grantaire could pretend).

“They’re gone,” he said. He disentangled his right hand to tousle his curls and Enjolras followed the gesture. “I was walking home from-” he narrowed his eyes at Enjolras. “You’re not permitted a comment.” Enjolras met his eyes, his own curls glittering in the gently pulsating lights, and he nodded. Grantaire sighed. “I was on my own, returning from a protest – I _know_ , ask Éponine. Some anti-protesters followed me and…” He made an upwards gesture.

Enjolras _stared_ at him. “They cut off your horns?” he murmured, disturbance lacing his tone like poison. “Grantaire, I- you never- I didn’t know that you had ever-”

“Participated in your kind of divinity act?” They had stopped dancing, and Grantaire had taken an unwise step away from Enjolras. He missed the proximity immediately (and wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t attempt distracting Enjolras by kissing him, the corner of his mouth, his _jaw_ \- but even he was aware of when such acts were inappropriate. Not that they weren’t already, Enjolras simply being Enjolras and Grantaire being, well, Grantaire). “Ange, did you never wonder why I discouraged you? Not that I wouldn’t have, regardless.” He smiled, and it was the kind that should have grated Enjolras’ nerves.

Instead, Enjolras took his own step away, skin gone pale and eyes too wide. A grey-olive mist swirled around him. “All this time, I was disdainful…”

“Oh,” Grantaire blinked. “Oh- no. That wasn’t the intended outtake from that.” He rolled up the sleeves of his hoodie and laughed and it was dusted with just a little too much panic. “Pray, don’t start regarding me in admiration either. I have grown weary of holding onto my past, I did not tell you for credit.”

Enjolras chewed the corner of his mouth, ducking his head to peer up at Grantaire. Then, ever so small and delicate, he smiled. Barely noticeable. “I must apologise nonetheless and-” he glanced up at the oscillating lights. “I’ve regarded you admirably for longer than tonight. That to, I am sorry for not expressing clearly.”

Fuck. Fuck. Grantaire’s heart had picked up so rapidly that he was dizzy, that Enjolras must have been able to hear it- _fuck_.

“Similar situation,” he blurted, the words flooding the back of his throat and rising into his mouth before he could even begin containment. “Not my horns, they’d already been sawed. But I was shadowed to the auditorium and- a human sorcerer laced my water with sedative or some ilk and spelled all the doors and windows so none could get out when I…”

His mind was spinning, and he didn’t realise he had begun to waver until Enjolras was pressed into his side, somehow managing to worm under Grantaire’s shoulder (a miracle in itself for how tall Enjolras was), and he was half-carrying Grantaire over to the sofa.

He didn’t know when they sat down, or even how much time had passed since Enjolras had guided him there. He did know the lights were flashing, turning a blinding white, a threatening scarlet, an obnoxious shade of dandelion. That Enjolras stayed beside him for it all, silent and warm and-

(How could he describe Enjolras then? Ever? Enjolras was- he was everything.

No. He hadn’t been in love with Enjolras before. And then Enjolras had asked after him, following the rally, and he’d come out of that glass door wearing a grey button-up and royal purple pyjama pants and Grantaire had been officially and royally screwed over)

When he stirred, cradled against Enjolras’ shoulder (tender, too tenderly), Grantaire’s mouth was parchment dry and his lips cracking. He made to pull away, the apology already rising in his throat, but his lips wouldn’t part and Enjolras wasn’t stiff beside him and there was an arm settled against Grantaire’s lower back.

The apology stayed stuck on his tongue and he willed himself just to say the words but- but then the prospect of talking, of uttering even the singular word it would take for an apology, felt like a monumental undertaking. It was too much, and he was drowsy.

“When I did not achieve the perfection my parents expected of me, my wrists would have an encounter with a cold iron rod.”

Grantaire made a noise from the back of his throat, could feel Enjolras’ muscles seize, and yet he still made no effort to pull away. Grantaire nearly mustered the strength to recoil, if only to gauge something from Enjolras’ features.

Striking- even touching a fae, a _child_ of all things, with cold iron for misbehaviour? It almost made isolation and disdain (funny how his parents were so alike and from entirely different worlds and had only met long enough to conceive a mutt) sound friendly.

“I told no one but Courf and Ferre that,” Enjolras continued, as it must have been clear to him that Grantaire was not recovered back to speech. “I mean, Courf was already aware, I had to tell him none of it but-” a slow, heavy exhale. Grantaire was tempted to shift, to listen to Enjolras’ heartbeat, to know he was real, that this, _they_ , were real. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

The noise that came from his throat was not a whine (it was not _not_ a whine), but something more rumbling, more affirming. Coloured, perhaps, slightly amused.

“Make the world sorry instead,” Grantaire murmured. The lights had stopped flashing as if at a mutilated disco and turned instead to a pleasant mulberry. “I would see you make the world writhe in guilt, to part oceans and move mountains to make amends for the atrocities, the injustices, until all the scales are level and the poisons in the lifeblood of humanity cured.”

The vibrations of Enjolras’ muted, throaty laughter echoed through Grantaire’s body and caught itself in his ribs.

The sound reverberated in his heart, over and over and if he could have this, this moment, then maybe he could chip away the steel encasing his bones until his ribs were feathers.

 

* * *

 

Winter sunk its claws into the land, shuddering and swift. But for all the bitter chill in the air and the sting that gnawed at any exposed skin and the decay of the land under its lacking mercy, it was beautiful.

There had only been light snow so far, and it technically couldn’t be called winter yet so early into November. But there was still snow, blanketing the landscape and shining like diamonds ground to dust and sprinkled over the earth.

Grantaire could not say everything, every day, was easy without lying. He couldn’t will himself to paint, at times, could barely stay awake at Les Amis meetings others, still spat the acid bubbling in his chest out at victims who didn’t deserve it when it built up too much in his own chest.

But it hadn’t gotten worse. Not everything was better but- but his friends were looking out for him, he had returned to seeing a therapist Feuilly had recommended him. And he was dancing.

It was almost more effort than it was worth – his therapist (for which he had painted an enchanted watercolour for Feuilly because he’d never gotten along with any of the ones he’d chosen, but she was- well, truly something) and Enjolras were still the only ones who knew, though he suspected Jehan knew somehow, as they were wont to do.

He couldn’t dance in an empty room, which meant Enjolras had to be present and it meant pulling him away from the projects he was working on (which Enjolras swore he did not mind, often bringing his laptop or stacks of papers with him), which settled like a mouldy rock in his stomach. He still panicked at times, still was hardly as flexible as he used to be. (Sometimes, it was too much, too much of everything all at once)

But he’d been told- if it didn’t start having any spirals, as long as he didn’t overexert him, it shouldn’t do more harm. (“It might do you some good, to get back into it. Build yourself back up to it.”)

There was also Courfeyrac, of course. (They’d been in the post-meeting reverie, where the atmosphere was still transitioning from attentive but idyllic, enrapturing, when Courfeyrac had extricated himself from wrapping himself under Combeferre to sidle up to Grantaire.

He’d thrown an arm around Grantaire’s shoulders and Grantaire knew he was in so very much trouble when Courfeyrac’s mouth twitched, eyes crinkling at the corners but sparkling.

“When’s the wedding?”

Grantaire blinked at him and pretended to ignore the look exchanged between Courfeyrac and Jehan that involved far too much eyebrow wiggling. “Come again?”

Courfeyrac patted his shoulder lazily. “You and Enj. The two of you are flourishing. It’s a little disgusting, in honesty. I feel as though I’m watching a married couple with the way you two bicker over politics and idealism these days.”

And if Grantaire pointedly did not imagine the conversation he’d had with Enjolras about Courfeyrac and Combeferre when he’d first brought him to Lamarque’s, about _blossoming_ that was none of Courf’s business. “So we get on better now. Is that not what everyone wanted? For us to stop fighting?” He was careful about directing his words, as not to encourage Courfeyrac.

He loved Courf, he did. But the fantasies- they were too much for him to handle. It was hard enough being so near to Enjolras.

It subdued Courfeyrac, anyway, if not disappointed him. He leaned back, not enough to recall his arm because an unphysically affection Courfeyrac was grounds for a true emergency, and pouted splendidly. “Be stubborn, pining scoundrels then. If anything _were_ to happen, I would be most unhappy if you did not thank me. You don’t wish my displeasure, surely?”

Grantaire’s stomach swirled and he had half a notion to go through everything that could possibly be tampered with of his, or Enjolras’. “Thank you?” he wondered, and partially regretted the words once they’d left his mouth.

Courfeyrac shrugged, the picture of innocence. Grantaire had half a mind to say _at least we aren’t half as disgusting as Ferre is when he speaks of you_ just to sic Courfeyrac onto his boyfriend. “I left you a consideration gift. In your bag.”

Bossuet had bumped a plate off a table then, and Grantaire had all but forgotten about it until he’d put his bag into his armchair at his flat later.

Oh. Grantaire could have killed Courfeyrac. Was it some kind of coded response to… _prepare_ his friends? How was he _this_ calm about it?)

He couldn’t be bothered to care about it and hoped nobody would find reason to rifle through his bag. (A small part of him knew he could just _remove_ them, and nobody would be any wiser but- well, what was he if not a masochist?)

It was a Friday, and Grantaire had been released from work early, and he’d gone right to Lamarque’s. Enjolras was there, even though his car was not (Enjolras walked to Lamarque’s, because of course he did). If Grantaire couldn’t feel his magic, climbing down the stairs and immediately beginning to shed his layers because it was at least as hot as a desert would have been the indicator.

As he entered the studio and threw everything he’d stripped of into a haphazard pile in the corner of the room, his first thought was to wish he’d stopped to grab a salad or something for Enjolras. God knew he could starve himself when he got so focused. Not that Grantaire was one to criticise, but he could thank the universe at least that Enjolras had Combeferre.

He had a mind to try going through easy motions for dance, barring Enjolras because he couldn’t always disturb him (and he was maybe feeling a little bit too energised today and there was no promise he wouldn’t try to act on things he rather shouldn’t act on. Like grabbing Enjolras’ hands to press kisses to his knuckles. He had come to enjoy the steady rhythm with Enjolras and would prefer basking in it for as long as he could), but decided quickly against such ideas.

Stretches, then. At least he wouldn’t get so hot and gross if he was only doing them. Even though he was wearing his sleeveless hoodie (sue him if it was cold out, he was sensitive).

Even that didn’t last long. Grantaire shucked it off into the disaster of clothes in the corner and returned to the scorpion that was a far cry from what it used to be. At least it was improved since he’d first started.

(He should have _known_ he was courting danger. And maybe he did, in some measure. It was an invitation, every time he did it. He and Enjolras only sometimes remembered common courtesy demanded you knock first- but it wasn’t like Enjolras didn’t already know about the auditorium. If he didn’t think too hard about it, Enjolras seeing the burns couldn’t be that bad)

He didn’t hear the door open. Didn’t even truly acknowledge the echo that ran down his spine at Enjolras’ magic.

Surprisingly enough, it was the intake of breath, flirting the edge of being a whine. He dropped his leg and found Enjolras in the doorway, lips parted like a flower blooming and eyes almost glazed. If Grantaire hadn’t known better, he looked near trance-like.

“Hey,” he said, when Enjolras made no clear attempts to move or speak or… do anything. _Why was he staring?_ If that gaze lingered any longer Grantaire’s heart was going to pound out of his chest. _What is it, Ange? What has transfixed you so?_

Enjolras’ eyes widened at him, cheeks becoming a kaleidoscope of colours as his brow twitched. “Hi,” he said, voice airy. But then- there was nothing. No explanation, and Enjolras continued to stare, the surprise melting way to a sort of discomfort and-

Grantaire’s throat constricted. _I know it’s an abomination_ , he didn’t say. _It’s hideous, I understand, but could you maybe not rub the salt against the wound?_ “Ange,” he prompted, squirming under Enjolras’ gaze (like direct fucking sunlight and in another world, he could just _imagine_ -) and already tracing the steps it would take to reclaim his shirt.

“Um,” Enjolras said, and then made another noise from the back of his throat. “Oh I- I apologise. I didn’t- is it too blistering? You could have- I only came to check you. On you.”

And, well, now it was ridiculous. How many times had Grantaire ever heard Enjolras speechless? He was facing Enjolras now, which meant he couldn’t see the burn, but surely with Combeferre and Joly, it couldn’t have been the worst kind of marring he’d ever seen?

“You should have realised no one narrowly escapes getting charred with no burns,” Grantaire muttered. And to his credit, he did make an effort not to sulk, but it was hard when Enjolras was looking at him like a vandalisation.

Enjolras blinked. Then something dawned across his features and- “ _No_!” he shouted, and then recoiled into his shoulders. It was Grantaire’s turn to blink. “I- no, that was not why I-” If possible, Enjolras’ cheeks grew darker. He finally looked away, turned his vision skyward and appeared to take several deep breaths.

Grantaire, on his part, attempted against frowning, to no avail. “Ange?” he repeated, because he was very unsure of what was happening and had as much handle on the situation as if someone had covered his hands in oil.

(But with Enjolras’ neck tilted back in such a way, eyes looking as if to the Heavens in prayer- _fuck_ him. Resolutely)

“It was- I simply did not realise the extent of your tattoos,” Enjolras said, and Grantaire tried hard to focus on his words and not the shadows and curves of his neck. “No, it wasn’t- I had assumed-”

“You envisioned how many tattoos I might have?” Enjolras’ gaze snapped down to meet his own so quickly Grantaire almost worried he might have hurt himself. Grantaire quirked an eyebrow, as though he were not having severe breathing hinderance. But if he didn’t tease Enjolras, he- he would- “You are allowed to enter, rather than gracing the doorway with your presence.” (No, _no_. Why had he had said? Offered that? This was a time _not_ to deal with Enjolras, not to encourage him-)

He was already crossing the room as he spoke to grab his hoodie, because Enjolras- standing _there_ , gaze running over the tattoos but also the imperfections the ink couldn’t hide-

Enjolras jumped, as if coming into unfortunate contact with a live wire, and then hastened to shut the door (perhaps a little too loud). Grantaire could see him, just out of his sight, turning back to Grantaire as though he were a magnet-

“Wait!” Enjolras said, before Grantaire could stoop to recollect his outfit. Grantaire paused to eye him, as Enjolras winced and began to chew fervently on his lip. “Please, cast that from your memory.” As Grantaire continued to stare (because- what- what the fuck? Had Enjolras just asked him _not_ to put clothes back on? Had he died recently? Was this a fever dream? Had something else gone wrong?), Enjolras took a step back towards the door. “I can retire.”

“No, you cannot,” Grantaire said, before he could think better of it. Also, because his mind was starting to pedal in reverse. “This is… not because of the scarring?”

Enjolras crossed the room faster than Grantaire could have even opened his mouth again, shaking his head as if denying guilt to a court. He was within arm’s length of Grantaire when he paused, raised his hand as if- as if- (to what? To _touch_?) He blinked. Dropped his arm. His cheeks were still coloured, his eyes dark like a thunderstorm at twilight.

Then- “No, no I- apologise. It- it’s my own beast to wrestle, forgive me.” His eyes found reprieve on Grantaire’s shoulder. “Does that clock truly work?”

He referenced the ornate, gear-carved clock, glittering with bronze tarnish and hands that were, indeed, silently ticking ever forward as time flowed around them sluggishly.

“Yes,” he said, though cautiously, as if it weren’t clear enough already. He lifted his right arm, baring his wrist to Enjolras. “As does this.” He regretted the gesture as soon as he’d made it. Enjolras’ fingers, slim and sturdy, curled around his wrist and Grantaire swallowed around the congealment in his throat. He was the one to offer himself, and Enjolras was merely observing the marginally quivering compass needle.

He _was_ merely observing it. And then he was peering up at Grantaire, tilting up his chin since he had bowed forward slightly. His curls fell unrestrained and wild and _free_ (and so fucking beautiful) and his lips were parted just so-

Then he was dipped in amber, because all the lights had suddenly changed and they were being drowned in gold and those red hues didn’t make for blinding colours, but it was intense and almost severe and-

And Enjolras was still holding his wrist.

His chest was compressed, but it didn’t hurt. His throat was full of honey, but it was sweet. He had also, possibly, been standing there for several moments without breathing, and neither of them had moved.

Enjolras’ eyes had drifted to watch the compass needle twitch on Grantaire’s wrist with brows furrowed slightly and Grantaire might have been shaking a little and he was pretty sure he should say something because Enjolras looked uneasy.

He took in a shuddering breath, and if Enjolras noticed, he said nothing. “Enjolras-” and it was all that he could get out. What was he supposed to say? Enjolras’ fingers were still wrapped around his wrist and his grip was growing tighter-

His fingers dug into Grantaire’s skin and as soon as Grantaire had said his name, his eyes snapped up. They bored into Grantaire like lights too bright to look at, yet they were anything but.

The glazed look had returned to his features like a fresh coating of paint, but he wasn’t frozen this time. This time, he lifted his free hand towards Grantaire, towards the stray curl that was tickling his eyelashes. And his expression had grown so very soft and near-reverent-

Grantaire jerked away, and his wrist felt as though retracted from being pressed against dry ice, or cold iron. His heart throbbed in his ears and his stomach was too hot, he was too hot _everywhere_ , and he felt a little bit like crying (he felt a lot bit like crying and he wished he hadn’t pulled away and he wished everything was simpler and he wished he could just show Enjolras’ curls sanctification with his fingers as though they were divine and pull him close and kiss him and-).

“You can’t,” Grantaire whispered, and his voice was hoarse like he’d never known the taste of water or the repetitions of speech. He had to breathe, he _had_ to, because more unseemly than everything else would be passing out in front of Enjolras in such a state. “Enjolras, you- please.”

But Enjolras- he- (suddenly, it hurt all over again, it hurt like a splinter to his heart that had sent off a fracture until dissolution-) his expression had fallen, brows knit in such distress that Grantaire almost did begin to cry in earnest ( _No! Do not grieve yourself so!_ And he would press kisses across Enjolras’ face, mapping out his faint freckles like the constellations, until that brow was set at ease again, and then he could press a kiss to the corner of Enjolras’ mouth-).

“I have upset you,” Enjolras murmured. His hand began to rise, before he set it back firmly by his side in such a fist that, had he not known the situation, he might have believed was one of righteous violence. “I have continued to do so-”

“You aren’t, you haven’t,” Grantaire said, shivering. (It was a lie, he was lying, liar _liar liar_ ). “Not-” he laughed, and it was dry and hollow and Enjolras looked so very, very miserable now and it twisted like a knife in his heart. “You must know, Ange. And I fear what would happen when you linger too long, too close-”

Shit, shit, why was he still talking? Why couldn’t he take a hint? Why was he evermore shoving his foot into his mouth?

“Tell me,” Enjolras said, and he said it so pleadingly it was as if he was in prayer. Grantaire stared at him as Enjolras took that step back towards him that Grantaire had tried to put between them and- _no, Ange! You don’t get it! I am not practised in self-restraint!_

And- _I am a little bit in love with you. I’m very much in love with you. It doesn’t hurt like it used to but then it does_. “ _Enjolras_ ,” Grantaire uttered, and could get nothing more out.

But he’d shattered the fragile boundary between them. Enjolras wasn’t understanding and he was raising a hand and those were Enjolras’ fingers in Grantaire’s hair and they were tightening around curls, dredging for purchase. Grantaire’s knees were weak and Enjolras was within breathing space-

His hands did not find Enjolras’ curls like he’d always imagined. He brought them forth with that intention but really, he was not accounting for what he did at all.

Instead, one found it’s place against Enjolras’ hip and he could not stop himself from driving his nails in as if everything would disappear should he not hold Enjolras tight enough. The other grabbed onto Enjolras’ arm, of the hand he’d reached up into Grantaire’s curls, and clutched at it.

And then, of course, there was the kiss itself.

He reined himself in to the best of his ability (which was a wonder since his mind was on another fucking astral plane), and allowed himself the gentle press of his lips against Enjolras’, and had all of the tenderness that Grantaire’s hands did not. Enjolras’ lips were chapped but they were sweet and warm and-

And they were pushing back. Enjolras’ other hand discovered his curls and he was _kissing Grantaire back_ and he was flush against him.

Currents ran through Grantaire’s veins and he knew it was Enjolras’ magic without thinking about it. Maybe some of his own, sparking through him like the hum of crickets in a still night.

One of Enjolras’ fingers brushed against the uneven, coarse buds underneath Grantaire’s curls and of course, Grantaire shuddered beneath the touch, and it was wrong of him to do because Enjolras slowly pulled away. And because all his discipline had been violently hurled out the window, Grantaire whined, echoing into Enjolras’ mouth as he pulled away (and if Grantaire hadn’t known better, he might have said it was reluctant).

“Are you- is this-?” Enjolras, in truth, had hardly wrought any sort of gap between them. He was still close enough that Grantaire could feel his breath, hot against his own mouth as he breathed him in, could almost brush the tip of his nose to Enjolras’.

He should have pulled away, should have put a pause on the scene to step back for a moment and realise what was happening. Enjolras couldn’t- he shouldn’t- they would never- (but Enjolras was, and they were) But the panic that should have accompanied everything, should have followed like an unwanted pestilence, had melted into the butterscotch pooling around them.

“Everything,” Grantaire murmured into Enjolras’ mouth, breath heavy. “It is everything.” Which, surely based on their prior communication skills, should have translated into nothing for Enjolras.

It translated, _God_ , it translated, and Enjolras was smiling and Grantaire had closed his eyes but he could feel it because Enjolras was kissing him again and everything was hazy in the best way possible.

And then Enjolras was kissing down his cheek, his jawline, all the way down to his throat and Grantaire could see stars. He could _feel_ Enjolras’ teeth, almost pointed, grazing his skin.

“What do you-” The words dissolved into ragged pants and Grantaire tried to collect himself. (Was it a little too much, how undone he became over kissing? Over Enjolras’ mouth, seeking his skin like it was the sweetest thing he’d tasted? Maybe. He did not care) “Where will this-?”

It was as though they were two instruments that had been freshly tuned to the other; Grantaire had to say nothing more because one of Enjolras’ free hands was starting to wander down his torso. It was cool and Grantaire felt like he might burn up. “Anything. All of it,” he mumbled into Grantaire’s throat. Then, after a pause as if his mind was buried in mud, “Sofa.”

Grantaire didn’t have to hear the request twice. He might not have been as flexible as he was in his youth (okay, he wasn’t as flexible as he was at nineteen before the accident, he wasn’t that aged yet), but boxing with Bahorel didn’t render him incapable. He wasn’t dainty.

To his misfortune, he did have to break contact with Enjolras’ insatiable lips to bend down, hook his hands around the back of his thighs, and scoop him up. On the contrary, however, it was entirely worth it to see Enjolras’ red – as if stained by wine – lips parting in surprise.

The sudden yank of his curls as Enjolras’ first attempt to anchor himself was more than a little painful, but he came to his senses quickly and wrapped both an arm around Grantaire’s neck and his legs around his waist. Stooping down, Enjolras pressed their foreheads together, and puffed hot breath against Grantaire’s cheek. “ _Taire_ ,” he whined. And then, as if impatient, began to press kisses too eager and too sloppy (but perfect. Perfect because they were from Enjolras and it didn’t matter what he was doing because it was _Enjolras_ who was kissing him) all over his face, unable to bend far enough to return to his neck.

It proved to be remarkably difficult to get to the sofa. For one, he had an overenthusiastic fae entirely obstructing his vision (which was not a _complaint_ but was, well, difficult) that he couldn’t, even for a second, take his eyes off as though fearing the daydream would dissipate if he did. Two, small noises kept echoing from the back of Enjolras’ throat and he was not heavy, but Grantaire’s knees were threatening to buckle at how dizzying those noises were to him.

(Also, Enjolras’ hand kept flexing in his curls as though he were a cat, kneading, and he hadn’t realised how good the pressure felt and, well, _fuck_ )

He had barely set Enjolras down (dropped him was far more accurate) when he was tugged down with him, as though Enjolras was unable to fall without Grantaire at his side. It wasn’t graceful, Grantaire barely avoided kneeing Enjolras directly between the legs, and their foreheads almost slammed together.

But Enjolras was already moving forward, as though it was all nullified as long as they were touching. He shifted back, pulling Grantaire with him by wrapping his hand not lost in his curls over the waistband of Grantaire’s pants. And he was reaching up again, seeking out the base of Grantaire’s throat to press open-mouthed kisses to.

They had slotted themselves on the length of the sofa, Enjolras was wriggling beneath him, Grantaire had one hand braced on the arm to keep himself from crushing Enjolras and one leg pressed between Enjolras’, and Enjolras had found his mouth again and he was nipping at Grantaire’s bottom lip.

And then- because he couldn’t, for once, simply ride the current because his instincts were broken- because this was _fucking happening_ -

He pulled away and – Christ smite him because Enjolras keened when he tried to follow and Grantaire was already too far away – gazed down at Enjolras below him. His hair, gleaming like bronze, like marigolds in the sun, like the magic he’d used to enchant his sunset piece nearly half a year ago, and it was spread out around him like a halo. It was everything he desired, longed for, and-

Enjolras was scowling, tugging insistently on Grantaire’s curls. “ _Grantaire,_ linger there and I shall-”

“-Are you of a sound mind?”

The scowl withdrew. Enjolras blinked. “What?”

Grantaire licked his lips and Enjolras tracked the motion, brow twitching again. “I only mean- are you positive? In this? In-” _me?_ His mouth had grown very dry, and he- his mind was whirling and-

An impressively dry look spread over Enjolras’ features. “Tell me,” he purposefully shifted his hips upwards against Grantaire’s thigh and Grantaire took in a shuddering breath, mind drawing a blank and magma coursing through his veins and forgetting what reason he had for resisting this, “does it feel to you as though I am uncertain?”

Before Enjolras could follow-up, _are you not? Are you not settled into this?_ because Grantaire could feel the questions about to roll off his tongue, he set upon Enjolras’ mouth just as it parted and revelled in Enjolras’ sigh.

The next time either of them spoke was for Grantaire to grumble about their still-present clothes as he massaged Enjolras’ earlobe between his teeth. Enjolras had begun to respond but it came out as an incoherent hissing and-

(And Enjolras was just as unravelled as Grantaire, and the scales had been tipped. They had levelled out, met in the middle, and if this is what balance meant than Grantaire was never, ever going to let them destabilise again.

Also, he no longer had any impression that Enjolras did not know how to interpret the lights when they changed colours)

Grantaire had an embarrassing amount of scenarios that led to moments like this, but- not this one. He’d expected at worst, Enjolras might be enabled by some fury confused with a physical pleading and Grantaire was the object of his deepest hatred and naturally, things might progress from there. At best, perhaps some kind of beneficial arrangement they kept in their own time, Grantaire being the best option because Enjolras would have discovered the swollen infatuation he held, because it would be easy.

(He hadn’t thought about it as of late, not as much. It had hurt too much, to idealise about it and be so absolutely unable to have it)

Not even in his most passion-frenzied dreams had he envisioned Enjolras, sated and drowsy, pulling Grantaire against his chest and burying his nose in the wild mess of his curls like it was the only place he completely and absolutely belonged.

And, if he was honest about it, in the afterglow that enfolded around them, it might have even been better than what had come before. Because Enjolras was tired but he was watching Grantaire and there was something so incredibly adoring glittering in his features and the way he was smiling that Grantaire could have well and truly cried. (He was probably no better, meeting Enjolras’ gaze and likely melting like a lovestruck fool)

His conclusion, he had decided, was that anyone who claimed sex was the holiest feeling in the world was a liar and had never experienced the fuzzy warmth of post-sex cuddling.

If it had all been only a honey-laced dream, Grantaire was sure he would break.

“Perhaps I should have pressed instead for a bed,” Enjolras murmured, voice muffled and heavy with lethargy.

Grantaire huffed, which was about as much energy as he felt he had to response. He pressed a cautious kiss against Enjolras’ shoulder and was rewarded with a pleased hum as well as Enjolras’ hand coming to card through his hair. “That implies you would have had foresight to this occurring.”

Enjolras shifted beneath him and Grantaire was worried, for a moment, that he had crossed some unspoken boundary between them. Enjolras wasn’t frowning, though he was chewing the side of his mouth, and he looked uncharacteristically coy. “I had hope…”

It was enough of an adrenaline shot that Grantaire propped himself up on an elbow, remorsefully losing Enjolras’ affectionate hand and hot breath against his scalp, to stare dubiously at Enjolras. “Hope,” he repeated, dumbly, and managed not to add _have you mistaken me for another?_

The raw tenderness of Enjolras’ expression was a twist in Grantaire’s gut, and he let out an almost shuddering breath when Enjolras reached up to resume his ministrations to Grantaire’s curls. He would not meet Grantaire’s gaze directly. “You must have known, by now, how you get to me.”

For some reason, Grantaire suspected he wasn’t referring to how irritated Grantaire could make him. And he didn’t say so, only felt as his lips parted to gawk a little too critically at Enjolras. He made several incoherent attempts to form a sentence before- “How _long_?”

The prisms on Enjolras’ cheeks were starting to return under the muted, parchment ivory lighting. “If you are wondering when it became known to me? When you refused the equality discussions. Not right away, but I was- I believed it was because of me, and I was… upset. I was speaking to Courf and Ferre-”

“-complaining,” interjected Grantaire, helpfully. When Enjolras nearly winced, he quirked up the corner of his mouth and Enjolras let out a soft snort through his nose when he realised, he was being made a sport of.

“ _Possibly_ complaining,” Enjolras amended pointedly. “Regardless, they made a few observations about why I might be so displeased, and naturally…” He peered at Grantaire, tucking his chin in shyly and growing sombre.

Despite his jest, Grantaire felt light-headed at the admission. Enjolras had wanted this? _Him_? For _months_? And said nothing? But- he had-

“There was the time I had come to your flat. Your neck had been streaked with paint, and I-” he cut himself off, flushing deeper, as if he hadn’t just been shamelessly wrapping his legs around Grantaire when he had been growing more than a little bold and teasing.

“I remember,” Grantaire murmured, letting out a shaken breath. “You nearly sent me into a conniption.” Then he shook his head and lowered it back to Enjolras’ shoulder. He laughed, not entirely from amusement, and absorbed himself back in the raw warmth and energy radiating from Enjolras. “Jesus, fuck, Ange. Why did you never speak of this? Everyone would agree that I take crown at being the least subtle person to exist. Even _Marius_ knew. On his own!” He shivered and buried his nose against Enjolras’ skin. “I was of the impression you hated me until only a few months ago.”

Enjolras shifted, as though trying to recapture Grantaire’s attentions, but Grantaire had become once more satisfied in burying himself into Enjolras. Also, his eyes might have been stinging ever so slightly.

“Never,” Enjolras said, after a moment. His voice was alight with something that wasn’t quite fury or righteous anger but bordered very close. “There has been not one moment where I hated you. Irritated, perhaps, angry, never hatred. You _confused_ me.” His fingers twisted in Grantaire’s curls. “Subtle regarding what?”

Grantaire could have laughed, but he did not. He pressed a more assured kiss to Enjolras’ clavicle and reached up to absently smooth out some of his untamed golden mane. “This,” he said in place of _I’ve been in love with you, not quite at the beginning but very much so now_.

A silence washed over them, but it was not unpleasant. Enjolras did not ask for more explanation, if the way he cradled Grantaire’s head and attended to his curls was not evidence enough, the equanimity thrumming around them was.

And then, Enjolras raised his head, and Grantaire craned his neck back to peer up at him. Enjolras’ brow was furrowed, just so, and if Grantaire did not feel so weighted he would have raised himself to kiss it away (because he could possibly do that now?).

“If you did not know of my affections, why were you already equipped for this to happen?”

Enjolras did not have to clarify he spoke of how he’d dragged over his bag to rifle through it after they had both belatedly realised they had not been prepared for- any of it. Grantaire felt his cheeks grow warm even as giggles unfurled in his chest and he only managed to tamp them away by swallowing.

“Ah,” Grantaire offered, with a lopsided grin. “That was Courf.”

By the scowl (which was defeated by the amused twitching of his lips) that dawned across Enjolras’ features, Grantaire knew he needed to offer no other explanation.

 

> (9:36pm. to courffee: 🙏

 

> 9:51pm. courffee: ;)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

 

So maybe, Courfeyrac was safe from Grantaire’s hit list. For eternity)

 

* * *

 

The half of Grantaire that had been sceptically convinced that the evening he and Enjolras had spent together, wrapped in each other on the dance studio sofa, was a singular thing, he had been sorely mistaken.

Maybe he should have guessed by how offended Enjolras had been when Grantaire had admitted how his parents felt towards him. At least, then, that Enjolras would be subtle about what had happened (even though Grantaire had driven him to his flat that night, and Enjolras had smiled at him with indescribable gentleness and leaned over his console to kiss Grantaire’s cheek before he got out. Okay, well, maybe Grantaire hadn’t been able to find it in him not to collect Enjolras’ hand before he could, couldn’t fight _not_ pressing his lips to Enjolras’ knuckles. Had his stomach turned into an absolute tangle of feelings when Enjolras’ expression had filled itself so full of wonder he had looked unearthly? Well).

The next time they saw each other was the following Tuesday. Grantaire had continued to make the terrible decision not to drive into work but walk instead, and he had forgotten he wasn’t en route to his flat but the Musain.

He was shouldering his bag, already able to feel the phantom chill that would no doubt encase his fingers once he stepped outside. He hadn’t even brought mittens and really, he should have known better.

And then Enjolras had come through the door as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do, the little bluebell-shaped chime ringing above him. He had paused when he saw Grantaire, and then smiled in such a way that Grantaire’s head exploded into butterflies.

When neither of them had moved for several moments, Floréal cleared her throat. Enjolras gestured vaguely and unhelpfully. “I sought you,” Enjolras said quietly, eerily reminiscent of the first time Enjolras had found his way to the parlour. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of what looked to be a new navy jacket that had gold buttons and made Enjolras look all kinds of gorgeous. (Had he done something to his hair that made it looked tarnished and absolutely fucking dreamlike?)

“So I see,” Grantaire said, only missing a few beats to breathe in the reality that Enjolras was _here_ and _stunning_ and Grantaire was really, really far gone. And he was feeling more weightless today.

(Sunday had found him curled beneath a fortress of blankets, with a cup of Jehan’s tea because Grantaire was doing his best to make an effort to allow his friends to help him in his downtrodden moments and he needed Jehan’s quiet, calming nature. One of the things that had made everything so unbearable was the loneliness, and giving in to letting Jehan be there- he must not have been particularly gracious, but it _had_ meant the world to him)

He could not help himself from feeling emboldened by the corner of Enjolras’ mouth twitching and held open the door into the bitter winds. “And what shall you do with your prize? A favour, perhaps?”

Enjolras did not respond until they had both crossed the threshold into the icy afternoon. Then, he removed one partially gloved hand from his pocket and then the glove. He stuffed it back in his pocket, before reaching hesitantly out towards Grantaire, fingers seeking.

Grantaire paused to consider, with no small amount of awe that Enjolras was here with him, wanting to hold his hand, before he gratefully reached out to intertwine their fingers. It was when they were tucked against each other that Grantaire realised how cold his hands were and how warm Enjolras’ were.

“Not quite,” Enjolras said. Then, he peered down at their entangled hands, and something oddly fond fell across his features. “Only to accompany my prize to our meeting, if he should so choose to allow me such.” He paused. Then, “Your hands are frigid.”

And if Grantaire stared at him with that same amount of amazement, well. He couldn’t be blamed. Dreams you had for years didn’t simply fall into your lap overnight. Enjolras, whose cheeks were bitten cherry by the cold, was beginning to frown and twitch nervously. And they could not have that.

“I’d allow you it for eternity,” Grantaire murmured, staring at Enjolras. “You desire this, then? Truly?” An exasperated expression fell across Enjolras’ face and Grantaire held up his free hand submissively. “I wouldn’t dream of asking again, if only I knew for certain.”

“Then you best keep your dreams in line,” Enjolras said, tugging on Grantaire’s hand to halt them. When Grantaire turned to face him, Enjolras put a blissfully warm hand over his cheek. He waited only as long as it took for Grantaire to lean into his warmth, smiled, and leaned down to kiss Grantaire as if it were that easy, as if they hadn’t done everything backwards, as if this was natural.

(It felt it. It felt as natural as breathing, kissing Enjolras. They were, by no means, in sync with each other. Their noses were still bumping when they kissed, teeth scraping where they shouldn’t be, but it was Enjolras. Kissing did not have to come all at once. Grantaire could wait)

Change was wont to follow in the aftermath. Their friends all cheered when they walked in (but by no means were surprised) and at least three of them may or mat not have cried (Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Bahorel. Courfeyrac had been the first to notice their hands, his eyes began to shimmer, and he wrapped himself around Combeferre whilst crying out, “Finally! I thought I’d sooner perish!” much too dramatically for the situation to warrant.

Éponine, of course, had threatened Enjolras bodily harm should despair come to Grantaire. Enjolras was only offended when he asked Combeferre or Courfeyrac if they were going to say the same to Grantaire and both had refused, siding with Éponine).

They still argued, still disagreed. Grantaire was not going to suddenly burst through chrysalis and start spouting off idyllic notions, which he said as much to Enjolras who merely shook his head (“I would not alter a thing about you, save that you had been spared the pain you’ve endured.” And then, Enjolras had gotten a sort of smirk across his face and Grantaire had raised an eyebrow. “In any case- I like arguing with you. You are the only one who will counter me without reservation. The peace talks would not have gone nearly as pleasant without you, bereft of your presence or no.”). Neither was Enjolras about to give up on his beliefs.

It was sometime after they found themselves in a fresh year that Grantaire halted on the walk to the Musain. Enjolras, still attached to his hand, had not realised Grantaire had stopped until he was caught as a dog on a chain was, stumbling into Grantaire as the momentum propelled Grantaire forward.

Instinctively, Grantaire caught Enjolras’ waist with his free hand to prevent any spills onto the icy pavement. Enjolras peered down at him with ill restrained curiosity (and perhaps some unadulterated adoration? Grantaire was… still getting used to that. But he _had_ realised what those looks meant), and Grantaire saw no reason to stop himself from tilting his chin to press a kiss that likely tasted of roasted beef and likely wasn’t the nicest flavour he’d ever had on his lips but Enjolras did not appear to mind by the way he reached up to Grantaire’s curls and pushed back.

(As it turned out, it was Enjolras and not Grantaire who had an affinity for burying their fingers in the other’s hair. Whereas Grantaire found it more satisfying to run over Enjolras’ curls, Enjolras liked to bury his hands into Grantaire’s curls as if attempting to get lost in his wild nest)

“Ange, I-” He hovered in front of Enjolras’ mouth, breath ghosting it. He could feel the words on his tongue, and they tasted like ash and his stomach worked itself into knots. He could barely bring himself to open his eyes but, when he did, he pulled away and forced himself to meet Enjolras’ gaze head on. He smiled and it was pained. “You know, I- I love you. Well, I believed you already knew that before November, but as it seems that I was mistaken- you don’t have to answer, I only wanted to-”

Enjolras’ fingers tightened in his curls and he kissed Grantaire through a smile. “I love you too,” he murmured. “I love you and if you keep distracting me, we shall never attend today’s meeting.” But his tone was soft and there was no malice and Grantaire had to stare at him for a moment, grinning as though he’d been offered the key to the universe.

(In some ways, he had)

They did make it to the meeting without a hitch and barely a minute late. They found their respective spaces (simply because they were dating did not mean they did not have their friends and their places), Courfeyrac whistling as they came in as if he had not been doing that consistently for months. They began arguing within twenty minutes, but there was something subdued about it.

(Enjolras would break off into a smile to replace a frown so abruptly it nearly gave everyone whiplash. Grantaire offered constructive criticism and did not press so hard into playing the devil’s advocate, and could not help but wink or blow kisses at Enjolras at the most inopportune times)

What was more peculiar and rapidly distracting, however, was how twitchy Courfeyrac was. Combeferre turned to murmur God-knew-what (probably nothing anybody else wanted to know) into his ear but Courfeyrac only smiled weakly. His hoof was clicking against the floor insistently and fingers drummed against the counter. Enjolras glared at him on several occasions, Combeferre placed his hand onto Courfeyrac’s to still it, and Courfeyrac sent several incredibly unsubtle glances in Grantaire’s direction.

It was the post-meeting tranquillity, the time where everyone simply caught up and took solace in each other’s company to counter the heavier things spoken, that Grantaire eyed Courfeyrac ‘borrow’ Éponine and Enjolras.

And really, if they were trying to be sly, they shouldn’t all have turned to look at Grantaire as a hush fell between them. He raised an eyebrow, Enjolras’ cheeks turned red, Éponine narrowed her eyes, Combeferre closed his eyes as though dealing with petulant children, and Courfeyrac smacked the table with his palm to reprimand them loud enough for Grantaire to hear where he was sitting.

“You told him.”

Grantaire turned away from Combeferre leaning over to press a kiss to Courfeyrac’s temple to meet Jehan’s knowing, bright gaze. A ribbon of flowers had blossomed around the small bun on the top of their head, while the rest was let loose and wild. The corners of their eyes were crinkled, their cheeks dimpled, as they smiled at him.

His own face grew warm, and Grantaire could pass it off as the hot air gusting from above them, but Jehan would know either way. No use trying to hide it. “Elaborate,” he said, as if he didn’t already know what Jehan meant.

They gave him a fond, but unappeased look. “You’re all but glowing. You were the same after you and Enj began courting. You cannot get together again- so you told him the depth of your affections, didn’t you?”

He pretended as though more annoyed, rolling his eyes, but Grantaire was smiling and Jehan could see through anyone. “Courting? This is not the nineteenth century. Or the Fae Courts.” Grantaire tapped his fingers absently against the table, and glanced towards Enjolras, who was chewing on the inside of his mouth as he was wont to do when distressed by something. “Yeah. I crossed the big _L_ threshold. We did.”

Jehan set their hands over his own. They were smiling, a light like cosmos illuminating their eyes, and several new blooms began sprouting through their hair. Grantaire could feel his left arm tingle and didn’t have to look down to see his ivy and flowers reacting.

Before either of them could get in another word, Enjolras had materialised at Grantaire’s side and gave his shoulder a distracting squeeze. Grantaire made to smile at him, but found Enjolras not-quite meeting his gaze, and the joy dissipated.

“You wouldn’t mind joining us, would you?” Enjolras asked. And then, he gestured towards the table where Combeferre had gone as far as wrapping an arm around Courfeyrac – _what_ was truly so upsetting? Courfeyrac was a creature of great emotions, but he was so much more jittery than was normal when he was upset – “Over there. With them.”

Exchanging a glance with Jehan, who gave Grantaire a thumbs-up and a soothing smile, he stood and allowed Enjolras to guide him over to the triumvirate’s claimed table (there were not reservations, it was a café after all, but the table always seemed conveniently open for their use whenever they held meetings).

“We don’t have to!” Courfeyrac said immediately, before Grantaire could even settle himself down into a chair. Combeferre sighed, Éponine watched him warily, and Grantaire gave Courfeyrac an odd look by bending his brow. “Only if you’re comfortable- it was only an idea besides-”

“Might I beg for more milieu before I write off whatever idea has struck you?” Grantaire wondered, cutting into Courfeyrac before he could go off. (Courfeyrac was not so dissimilar to Grantaire. They both rambled when nervous, usually for different reasons)

Courfeyrac stared at him for a moment before he smiled, weakly, and nodded. “Well, it’s only- I was curious, yeah? Which is probably going-behind-your-back of me, but I didn’t want to bring it up or make you unhappy-”

“ _Courf_ ,” Combeferre murmured.

“I noticed the lot where your auditorium was still remains vacant and I thought ‘what a swell project for when the temperature rises! How fetching an idea would _building_ an equal opportunity auditorium be! And it would be the single most wonderful _fuck you_ to those soggy bigots! R could create murals, community murals, and we could make plaques out front for-’ well. I was perhaps a little tipsy, but then I spoke of it to Ferre, and he thought it was nice, and if _Ferre_ believes it to be nice, then it must count for something, right?”

Éponine touched Grantaire’s knee when he had gone still, and he could feel the pressing weight of several gazes on him. Courfeyrac (bless him, in truth) was still elaborating, claiming of greater grandeur than before, magic wards to prevent similar disasters from happening, fundraisers. It became white noise after a few moments until Enjolras, who was keeping a hand wrapped in Grantaire’s (if he were honest, he hadn’t noticed when that had occurred), snapped, “ _Courf_.”

Courfeyrac snapped shut his mouth, recoiling back towards Combeferre with a pained guilt spreading across his face as though he been struck by lightning. Grantaire shook his head. “No, it’s… all right. I- only I need a moment. I would simply appreciate quiet.”

Mildly encouraged, Courfeyrac nodded, though remained bashful about his overexcitement. Grantaire gave Enjolras’ warm palm a squeeze, and patted Éponine’s hand with his freed one. _I’m okay, let me mull, let it settle in._

It was never going to be absolutely okay. The pain was never going to vanish, and Grantaire was never going to forget the night at the auditorium. There were still going to be things that felt as though out to get him, that would unlock some frenzied part of his mind that he thought had passed.

But if they could get the permits- (he’d loved dancing once, loved the idea of the auditorium, loved the idea of change even if he never had really held much belief. He still loved dancing, but it was never going to be his main focus again, was never going to be his star attribute)

“I’m not sure how involved I’d like to be,” Grantaire said finally, pulling Courfeyrac to meet his gaze. “I can’t… promise anything. Let me-” he winced but grounded himself with Éponine and Enjolras’ hands. “Let me speak with my therapist, garner her thoughts, but- I’d like if you went through with it.” He willed a smile, a small one, and wasn’t sure if it was for Courfeyrac or for himself.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Courfeyrac sat upright so fast, it was as though a metal rod had been jammed into his spine. Then, he leaned over the table, holding out his hand. Grantaire reluctantly let go of Éponine and Enjolras’ to put his on Courfeyrac’s.

“Thank you,” said Courfeyrac, who was letting out a breath through his nose. He looked significantly more at ease now and grinned openly.

Clearing his throat, the discomfited little stone settled in Grantaire’s stomach, and he rolled his shoulders. “Wasn’t as if you required permission,” he grumbled good-naturedly. Although he was not to a comfortable place of discussing it, it was hard not to be affected by Courfeyrac’s infectious joy.

Courfeyrac shrugged, finally pulling back to curl himself back into Combeferre. “Maybe, maybe not. But still thank you, well, for everything. You know?”

Grantaire gave him a look. No, he definitely did not know, but Courfeyrac had regained his sunny disposition again and Grantaire was loath to disturb that. Besides, Combeferre had his chin tilted down and his affection was thrumming around them and it was simply _gross_.

But it was rich from him, as Enjolras moved to settle against him and began to comb through unruly curls with his fingers, and maybe Grantaire was okay with being gross. On their own terms, not the sappy fools across from them.

“Ugh. Disgusting,” Éponine said, true to Grantaire’s thoughts. “I’m leaving.” Grantaire offered her a smile as she stood up, but she merely kicked his foot (he could see her lips twitching though, as she departed them to seek out the company of Feuilly and Bahorel, who were having an arm-wrestling contest for the fifth time that day).

He had to swat Enjolras away, eventually, lest he fall asleep in the middle of the Musain. Courfeyrac had to drag Combeferre out soon after, as the vampire began to nod off dangerously close to his horns.

“She’s right,” Grantaire said to Enjolras as the two made their farewells, “they’re pretty bad.”

“Let them be,” Enjolras smirked and glanced down at his papers scattered across the table in front of them. “Combeferre has been hiding away a ring for almost three months. At first, it was only in case the right moment fell upon them without it, which would be ‘tragic’, his words. Now he’s simply stalling.”

Grantaire felt his eyebrows rise higher than they probably should be able to go. “Do you honestly mean to tell me, he _doesn’t_ believe Courf will say absolutely?”

Enjolras only smiled knowingly, and Grantaire pressed a kiss to smooth, warm knuckles that could never be marble.

 _God_ , he thought, pulling out his sketchbook to capture the hand so conveniently placed in front of him. _If someone had told me this was where I was going to end up_.

Sometimes he missed dancing, in between those moments of life. But then again, sometimes he missed his friends, missed his horns, missed painting. He could miss everything in the world, and it would still go on without him. Nothing worth the effort was that easy.

(He might have laughed, might have fallen into a fit of melancholy, definitely would not have believed, had something told him this was where he’d be. But none of it would matter, because he was here, and that was what counted.

 _And so the lighten’d heart soon learns to see, that it still lives, and beats, and ought to beat. Off’ring itself with joy and willingly, in grateful payment for a gift so sweet_ )

 

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me over on [tumblr!](https://deweiiii.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> The poem Jehan quoted was Trilogy of Passion: III. Atonement.
> 
>  
> 
> fun facts about the fic!  
> -I accidentally fell into the habit of not letting r breathe anytime enj was near. just, enj would appear and r would be like “breath??”  
> -almost sent the line “That, too, was a lie. He _desired_ to feel, to claim, the warmth he knew the fae possessed, sought an equal _give_ and _take_ but such wants would remain in folly.” to my aunt when I was trying to send her a happy birthday message lol.  
> -wrote “assess the distress” at one point and almost kept it in because it made me laugh even though it was stupid.  
> -I am so sorry that you can so clearly tell this was written by someone who knows Nothing About Dancing.  
> -yes, I definitely took liberties with r’s post-sepsis recovery (combo of being in the icu and the burns he sustained). did I not once think of adding some kind of physical therapy? you bet! (looked it up for the fiftieth time during the enj/r scene where he’s trying to dance again and I,,, realised,,,, he would have had pt after all that,,,, but hey, magic! *sweats nervously* did I forget to include any magic in the medical world? *finger guns away*)  
> -did I take the “love triangle where a and b are in love with c but then realise they’re in love with each other while c adopts a puppy” for the cosette/éponine/marius situation??? absolutely.  
> -did I refer to condoms as “shield” and “armour”? also yes.  
> -there are so many scenes that did not end up happening.  
>  ~~-am I considering writing a courferre or eposette or jbm version of this???? ??????~~  
>  ~~-ask me about grantaire’s tattoos I have a list~~
> 
>  
> 
> (if there was any confusion about who was what! here's a list:
> 
> Grantaire: half-puck, sorcerer  
> Enjolras: fae  
> Jehan: nymph  
> Combeferre: vampire  
> Courfeyrac: satyr  
> Joly: human with rejuvenation magic  
> Bossuet: selkie  
> Musichetta: dryad  
> Bahorel: werewolf  
> Feuilly: human, sorcerer  
> Marius: human  
> Éponine: werewolf  
> Cosette: half-siren  
> Gavroche: human)


End file.
